History Main / EnemyDetectingRadar

->I also invented your radar, which somehow knows which direction enemy soldiers are looking and even when they yawn.
-> -Mei Ling, [=ToastyFrog=].com Thumbnail Theater: "Metal Gear Solid, Part 1"

* ''GalaxyQuest'': "Red-thingy moving toward the green-thingy. I think we're the green-thingy."

** Oddly enough you had to unlock a cheat code to ''turn the radar off''. The most common reason for bothering unlocking this cheat was when you had a friend who was so good at the game in multiplayer you had to do ''something'' to make things harder for him.

-> -Mei Ling, ToastyFrog.com Thumbnail Theater: "Metal Gear Solid, Part 1"

* The [=PIPBoy=] has a motion tracker option in ''{{Fallout}} 1'' & ''2'', which will display all living entities on the minimap scanner when it's switched on.

* The7thSaga gives you a crystal ball that allows you to detect enemies, among other things. This functionality seems present mostly for the game to taunt you, as it's nearly impossible to avoid running into them.

* ''{{Armored Core}}'' has this in almost every game, often [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience color coded]], but in a bit of a different way; The colors of enemies on radar change depending on their vertical alignment with you (blue for higher, yellow for lower). Starting with Armored Core 4, this system is abolished in favor of a 3D radar, but target enemies show up in red while everything else is white.

* Dragon Age Origins has a skill...I think it's called Survival, and as you gain levels in it, the enemy shows up on your screen.

* The top-down automaps in ''{{Doom}}'' and Doom II allow you to see enemies (and other objects) with the proper cheat codes on.

* Played with in ''AirForceBlues'', where an AWACS controller offers a visiting fighter pilot the chance to see a [[{{Qurac}} Quraci]] MiG get in a dogfight with a Predator drone... and we see a shot of a very simplistic line rendering on the radar screen with all of the contacts being represented by dots with a short text description. To be fair, the AWACS controller never said it would ''look cool''.

** Want a real life Motion tracker? The closest you'll get in the civilian market is the T-Cube sensor. 500 metre maximum range, with an SOS function, encryption and real time motion detection, the only catch is that you can only see friendlies on your screen. And that it's $500 for two. Here's a http://www.redwolfairsoft.com/redwolf/airsoft/Combat_Gear_Electronic_Positioning_Devices_T_Cube_Motion_Tracker_Unit_Dual_Pack.htm----]

*** And herbalists can track ''plants'', and miners can track ''rocks''...
* ''CatacombAbyss'' and its sequels have you collect crystals throughout the game; each crystal allows you to see one specific type of enemy on your crystal ball (like a radar, it shows enemies at some distance all around you, though it isn't an automap).

* Who can forget the good ol' top-down automaps in ''{{Doom}}'' and Doom II? It also appeared in ''{{Duke Nukem 3D}}'' and ''{{Shadow Warrior}}'', as well as in a host of contemporary FPS games.

*** And herbalists can track ''plants'', and miners can track ''rocks''...

* ''ValkyrieProfile2'' has a radar when battling the enemy to show the relative positions of your team and the enemy's.

*** And herbalists can track ''plants'', and miners can track ''rocks''...
* Long-range scanners in the ''StarTrekTextGame'', possibly the UrExample from 1971.
* Want a real life Motion tracker? The closest you'll get in the civilian market is the T-Cube sensor. 500 metre maximum range, with an SOS function, encryption and real time motion detection, the only catch is that you can only see friendlies on your screen. And that it's $500 for two. Here's a http://www.redwolfairsoft.com/redwolf/airsoft/Combat_Gear_Electronic_Positioning_Devices_T_Cube_Motion_Tracker_Unit_Dual_Pack.htm----]

----

* ''FinalFantasyXI'' possesses two radar systems. The first can be used by all the classes in the game and is part of the normal HUD, but actual targets you can attack will only show up if you have the Beastmaster, Ninja, Thief, Ranger, Summoner, or Blue Mage jobs either as your main or subjob. Beastmasters and Rangers(and anyone who subs them) can use Wide Scan, which essentially uses the map of the area as a radar for NPCs and monsters. You can even select one to "track", which allows you to hunt it down by pointing towards it on the normal radar.
** ''FinalFantasyXII'' uses a similar system. A mini-map is shown at all times in the corner of the screen. Green dots were NPCs, blue dots were either your allies or a neutral character in the battlefield, red dots were foes, and huge red dots were bosses.

** Using tools like [=UAV=] Jammers, Camoflauge, or being Cold Blooded will hide you from this sort of detection.
** As well, these maps can be defeated by using surpressed weapons - firing one wouldn't have you show up on enemy radar.

* As mentioned above, this is TruthInTelevision: There is also a widely-used military system called a Radar Warning Receiver, which (in many, but not all cases) identifies the type of radar emissions (i.e. SPY-1, "High Lark", Agave) and can determine the likely threat of them. A general hint- a solid-tone indicates a lock-on.
** Us locking-on to them, or them locking-on to us?
*** It indicates that an enemy radar emitter has locked on to you and may be getting ready to fire.

* Variant in TeamFortress2 - On capture point / king of the hill / territory control maps, the HUD includes a display of which team controls the point, whether it's in contention, and how fast it's being capped. On payload / payload race maps, it shows the progression of the cart(s). On capture the flag maps, it points out the current location and status of both flags with rather unhelpful arrows (and if you're carrying the flag, the direction you have to go to get it back to your base).

Lots of real life combat vehicles have a radar (or in the case of seafaring vessels, a sonar) that can help the pilot navigate the battlefield and avoid enemies, so it's no surprise that this is often part of video games that feature such systems. Sometimes it's justified as your character's equipment or psychic abilities or {{Handwave}} as AWizardDidIt; other times it's just there with [[GameplayAndStorySegregation no explanation]] except to [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality make the player's life easier]]. It may also partially model non-visual cues that humans tend to get like positional sound location (an aspect of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect cocktail party effect]]) which are difficult to implement in video game sound systems which often lack the ability to create true positional sound. Alternately, the "radar" is used to detect hidden items instead.