Sensors

In space, sensory information is vast and easy to come by if you have the technological understanding of the information coming in. Thankfully mankind possesses that technological aptitude, and has long been able to extrapolate meaning from the nearly limitless data of the heavens.

Modern Sensors

In the field of sensory technology it is rarely a question of who is the best, but a question of who is the most efficient at noise canceling. Technology has erased any questions early space-farers had about transit, motion, and placement in the solar systems. However in doing so the powerful systems created a new problem - white sensory noise.

The biggest problem today is that everyone could have access to sensors capable of reading and interpreting almost all location and motion data in an entire system from any given point (with some dead-zones due to alignment). While not a problem in the areas where such information is processed on a read-only basis, where the ships, colonies, and stations pickup light-spectrum data, the issue manifests when groups actively seek out more information in a feed-back format.

Feedback

The white noise problem caused early systems havoc as the number of travelers increased and signaling data intermingled, bouncing off or combining with other signals into a soup so thick little value could be had. A common problem was ghosting where signals would mix in such a way as delayed signals or improperly bounced signals would be processed as "phantom ships" on read-outs.

Eventually standards were developed to combat the white noise problem, from specific encoding mechanisms to a heavy push for "non-limitless" information.

Non-Limitless

In this push the standard evolved such that people quickly realized they could simply know too much about the system at any given time, on too fine a scale. While good for military groups and the like, average commercial and non-commercial activities simply did not need that level of detail. Giving up some degree of scope helped to eliminate a large segment of broadcast noise.

Now, sensory information is given on a "semi-efficient" theory, where only localized information that could directly impact an object is necessary to make decisions. In doing so people have given up a lot of accuracy that was beyond the scope necessary for their operations and thus can save time sifting through garbage.