Animus ; Animus 2.0

The Animus (Animi in plural tense) was a virtual-reality machine, re-discovered and developed by Abstergo Industries, to read a subject's genetic memory and project it on to an external screen in three dimensions.

Initially developed by "Those Who Came Before", the Animus technology was re-discovered by the Knights Templar in an unknown year and subsequently re-developed for their own use. The technology underwent several stages of development and prototypes before a satisfactorily working model was created, although by 2012 the technology had still not been perfected.
The technology had been in use by the Templars at Abstergo Industries for a lengthy time by 2012 however, although after sixteen test subjects they had failed to achieve their aims.

Animus 1.0

 

The Animus 1.0 (or more precisely, 1.28) was the first model of Animus to be created, by Abstergo Industries, and enter actual use. Abstergo Industries possessed an unknown number of Animi, and their captive – Desmond Miles – initially believed there only to be one, during his escape however, he discovered their to be at least one large room full of the devices.
Colored chrome, with blue lighting lining the machine in places, the Animus 1.0 resembled a bed, and was designed to comfortably fit the user. When in use, the Animus extended a glass panel around the head of the user, on which the genetic memories being accessed were projected. The Animus 1.0 was not very energy-efficient however, and was prone to overheating after extended use. During overheating the blue lighting begins flashing orange instead.

Animus 2.0

The Animus 2.0 was an upgraded model of Animus that had been developed by the Assassins in 2012. According to the Animus developer and maintainer, Rebecca Crane, her "Baby" was "twice as awesome" as the ones at Abstergo Industries. The Animus 2.0 was different in many ways to the Animus 1.0, both physically and inside the three-dimension reality it projects. For example, the background color has changed from an icy blue to white, whilst during loading of a memory sequence the entire region said memories took place in is seen to "load up".
The physical properties of the Animus have also changed greatly, with the 2.0 being an actual chair, offering increased comfort to the user. However, due to this, a catheter is required to link the user into the Animus' hard-drives through the subject's arm and to project the genetic-memory. Despite these improvements, the Animus still suffers from lagged translation software and is unable to prevent the bleeding effect from prolonged use.
The new model of Animus allowed for remote interaction from an outside source, which included uploading database-like information packets for the user to view. During Desmond's time with the Assassin's in 2012, Shaun Hastings, a sarcastic historian and tactician for the Assassins, made great use of this utility, providing countless files on historical figures and locations.

Usability

The Animus was developed by Abstergo Industries to be user friendly, although at first they found their test subjects to have difficulty in adapting to their control scheme; subsequently, they changed the control scheme to match that of games consoles projected into the users mind, which improved the user response rate and allowed for quicker adoption of the control scheme.
Despite their core of the technology merely allowing the user to view genetic memories encoded into their DNA, the Animus allowed the user a degree of interaction with the environment they were viewing. Although this was limited in the Abstergo model, the level of interaction increased greatly in the Animus 2.0, allowing the user to choose the pace at which they progressed through the memories.

Heads-up display

The Animus' heads-up display, or HUD, was a graphical interface that was projected on-top of the memories being viewed, and was visible whilst the memories was being interacted with. The HUD provided the user with useful information such as their current level of synchronization, currently utilized armament, a birds-eye map of the local area, and a four-piece movement control scheme.
Utilizing the HUD, the user was able to monitor their progress and interact with the environment at their own pace. It also offered the user a way of tracking the ancestor targets, as well as their allies and enemies.

Synchronization

As the user of the Animus was able to interact with the environment in which he was viewing the concept of synchronization was brought into play. Failure to follow the memories of an ancestor exactly often resulted in a temporary decrease in synchronization with said ancestor, and continual actions in this vain would lead to total de-synchronization; this in turn forced the user to reload the memory at an earlier point. The Animus was designed to put up barriers when the user attempted to interact with an environment the ancestor had not done so at that particular time in their life, and was also capable of ejecting the user in extreme cases of de-synchronization.
The Animus technology suffered from a major complication with regards to synchronization in all its models. Prolonged use caused a condition known as the "bleeding effect", which blended the real-time and genetic memories of the user they were viewing, transferring thoughts, skills and experiences from the ancestor to the descendant. Prolonged use without cool-down periods often resulted in mental degradation of the subject, and in rare extreme cases, total mental instability.