Message #360

From: Roice Nelson <roice@gravitation3d.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] More ideas
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:58:08 -0600

I’ve seen a really well-designed interface that these feature requests
remind me of in a polytope visualizer called Jenn.

http://www.math.cmu.edu/~fho/jenn/index.html

It easily allows spinning the rotation in any of the six degrees of freedom
of a 4D rotation. You can make it so the spinning stays constant or
gradually slows down. The best part is the simplicity with which you
control the rotations, which requires only a 3-button mouse. It might be
something to check out for anyone looking into implementing spinning-type
features involving all the dimensions. I too have thought it would be cool
to remove the constraint that the 4D rotations were all 90 degrees, though I
could see myself wanting to keep that restriction when working on solutions.

(aside for Melinda: There is a version of that Jenn program that will turn
the vertices of any Coxeter polytope into a Go board. I thought this was so
cool, as you can do things like play Go on an edgeless toroidal board,
creating all kinds of havoc in many of the traditional strategies.)

Take Care all,

Roice

On 1/3/07, Jesse Thompson <jesset@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Say I do like that "spin dragging" concept. Much like Google Earth. :)
>
> Here are some feature proposals that capture my imagination based on
> that…
>
> • Lock spin.. you get it spinning, enable this, and it keeps spinning even
> while you click cubies to solve things
> • spinning controls.. perhaps some rudder-style panel to control spin
> velocity? I’m sure you’re using some internal variables to define the spin.
> Such controls would simply tweak those values.
> • Wander.. imagine the spin variables smoothly changing over time, giving
> you unique views, changing up the gimbals? Combine this with a constant
> "solve" / "randomize" / "repeat" loop and you’ve put together one hell of a
> screensaver! Perhaps the wandering behavior could have another control
> panel of some kind.
> • W dimention spin variable.. hard to define with the standard spin/drag
> of course, but with the advent of lock -> ( rudders || wander ) mapping it
> to mouse movements would not be nessessary. It would be fairly intriguing to
> see that green hyperface peek in from time to time! :)
>
> I do have a reason for such odd requests besides making the puzzle into a
> lava lamp. I’ve found that as fun as the speed game of "ctrl-1 (random
> scramble one move) -> guess how to undo the move" is, it is even more
> interesting with the hypercube spinning. Except of course that to try a
> solution makes the cube stop spinning. For me the visualization of solving a
> moving cube is quite intriguing, and even helps in some way my brain to
> grasp the dimentionality of it all. My occipital lobe gets real time
> examples of which cubie stickers are "adjacent" to which and why.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> If I get flustered enough to remember how to code in Java (it certainly
> helps to be tweaking a live app, man I hate swing’s inconsistancies ;) would
> you accept a patch?
>
>
> How was everybody’s Christmas? :)
>
> - - Jesse
>
>