Disguises

A mask is the whole point of a mask. This page explains what each kind of cover does to a scan, and the one rule that makes disguises actually work: the masked-person rule.

#What each item hides

Items add up: sunglasses plus a bandana leave the face bar at 5.

Clothes hide more than a face:

#The masked-person rule

This is the part that matters.

When somebody's face is 60 % covered or more — a bandana, a mask, a closed helmet — they are not "you with a mask on" as far as recognition is concerned. They are a masked person.

So if a friend of yours walks up in a balaclava and you scan them:

• the result says "Noted", exactly as for a total stranger;
• a second, separate memory is created — "the hoodie guy";
• your memory of your friend is untouched;
• nothing on your screen ever hints that the two are the same person;
• even the scan speed is normal, so familiarity never whispers "you know this one".

Meet that masked person again and you recognize the masked person: "Recognized — Met a masked guy on Grove St at night". You still have no idea who is under it.

A quick look needs more than the clothes. Somebody you remember with an open face is recognized in 2–3 seconds. A masked person you remember is only recognized that quickly when something that really belongs to them confirms it:

• their voice — the same voice-changer voice you heard last time, after about two seconds of them talking; or
• the tattoos you remember, on skin you can see.

Matching clothes alone are never enough: two robbers in the same black hoodie and balaclava would otherwise be told apart in two seconds, which no real witness could do. Without a voice or tattoos the normal full scan runs — exactly as for a stranger — and at its end it still finds that old memory ("Recognized — Met a masked guy on Grove St at night").

A masked memory below 80 % shows Not sure 60 % and nothing else. The robber who spoke through the same changer as last time is exactly that: a suspect you cannot act on yet. With his remembered tattoos visible as well, he reaches 80 %.

#The same masked person, or a new one?

The script matches a masked person by how alike they look, not by an exact outfit.

When a masked scan ends, what you saw is compared with every masked memory you hold of that person, and the best match wins:

• Same hoodie, different cap? About 94 % alike — still the same hoodie guy, and your memory of them is simply refreshed.
• A genuinely different outfit, below 40 % alike? A new masked memory.

You can hold up to four masked memories of the same person at once. A fifth retires the one that would have run out soonest. Your memory of their real face is never dropped.

#When the mask comes off

If they take the mask off in front of you and you recognize them in that same look, the two memories quietly become one. A mask that goes on or comes off while you are not looking at them never links anything. Your memory of the person keeps its original line, and the masked memory folds into it.

That is the only way the link is ever made. A later meeting where the mask never came off leaves the two memories separate — because if the "hoodie guy" entry suddenly vanished from your list after an unrelated meeting, that on its own would tell you who he was.

#A mask put on too late

The masked-person rule protects you when people meet you masked. Somebody who already recognized you keeps knowing it is you: if you put the mask on in front of them, their live result stays on you — the face badge turns orange and the % drops, but their HUD still shows who you are.

#What a disguised scan can still reach

A masked person is not unrecognizable — they are just harder:

So a talkative masked person in a distinctive outfit can still be scanned to 80 % in about a minute. Covering the face is not the same as being invisible — it just means that what people remember is the outfit, and outfits change.

#Clothing colours

The same jacket in another colour counts as a 60 % match, not a miss. Nobody remembers a wardrobe perfectly.

#Unknown clothing

If your server just installed an EUP or addon clothing pack, the script does not know yet what those items hide. Until an admin runs Auto-scan, unclassified items are treated like this:

See Clothing Classifier & Auto-scan.

#Settings

Full details: Face Coverage, Clothing & Tattoos and Memory & Familiarity.