One thing that was key about the wireless, all-present matrix was that distance was non-existant. There were no rules for noise caused by dialing up somebody in china, and unless you knew what you were looking for before you went to VR, you were left floating in your home node without any awareness of what was around you aside from (assumably) some kind of list of addresses to who knows where.
Now though, they specify two major differences. One, they point out that you automatically detect all devices (and persona) within 100m of you, assuming they aren't running silent. And two, there is the Grid.
In SR4, you weren't ever just in "the matrix". You were on a node somewhere. Your VR persona was standing in a device at all times, whether it was your commlink, your biodnode, or your gun. But in SR5, there exists a general overlay of vague matrixspace around you called the Grid. Devices exist on the grid instead of being their own little houses (nodes) while things that need their own spaces are hosts. And with the inclusion of physical distance affecting your automatic matrix perceptions, actual distance started to matter again. The grid is the free space that devices use to talk, hence why there's a penalty for going across the grid and using the public one, as it gets cluttered or jumbled between grids.
But here's where things get blurry, to me, when VR gets into the picture. They state several times that the Grid looks more or less like the area it's in. Seattle's public grid having that greenish glow is brought up a lot as it is more or less an overlay of what the city actually is shaped like (minus all the detritus) and conforms to make it look like everything is lit up. And even in VR, where your deck is (or body for TM's) determines what things around you can be automatically detected. So if you're in VR, you can see what the grid looks like, which is affected by what the world around you actually looks like (as you're seeing the same thing people using AR see, just only that and not as an overlay). You can see the host that is the big restaurant next to you, and you can see the PAN of your allies, along with the icons of any wireless-active (but not silent) devices they have.
You can also see other people's persona. You have to, if you're attacking it via cybercombat you need to be able to detect it. But you can also do cybercombat via AR, right?
Alright, so my point is this. Can I actually get a general layout of where I am through VR? By which I mean, I may know who's around where, in the real world, my persona is by how far they are from my body? At the same time, if someone is in AR, they can see someone's VR persona (once again, assuming best case where it is within 100m of them and not running silent). So does that mean if I'm in VR, I can literally be "with" my team (assuming they are outside where the Grid reaches) because my persona is visible to them via AR? If I'm outside looking around in AR can I sometimes see someone's VR persona bumbling about in the public grid, only aware of what's reflected on to the grid? And if I summon a sprite, register it, and choose not to tell it to go back into the resonance, is it visible in AR floating around me on whatever grid it happens to be on?
Since AR interacts with VR, and AR is restricted by real world positioning... Is what happens in VR that plainly obvious to people in AR if they are standing, in real life, near where the action is happening if it's on the grid?
