Message #225

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] My gallery!
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:07:38 -0800

Wow, Roice presents yet another tour de force!!
Here is my random feedback:
* I love how you’ve insisted on a single set of projection parameters
thereby maintaining a "faithful" spatial representation. I’m not opposed
to using unfolded or other logical representations if that makes the
puzzle more solvable but if it can be operated and solved this way,
that’s much preferable. In fact it’s for exactly this reason that we
felt motivated to building the 4D version in the first place.
* The wireframe representation does help one to see the structure though
it may be harder to select stickers. BTW, the 4D stickers look *very*
cool! With a wireframe design I’d personally prefer side-by-side
cross-eyed stereo views otherwise you can only make out the structure
while rotating it, but I know that is not for everyone.
* The 3D drag rotations clearly applies all of one axis rotation before
the other which makes it different to predict what will happen. I
suggest that you use the quaternion code that I use in the Java version
which makes it so that each drag increment always does what you
naturally expect.
* Instead of axis drop-downs for 5D rotations I would suggest a
lower-triangular grid of 15 small rotate buttons.
* I suggest that toggling of individual faces should operate on their
rotated logical positions rather than on their colors. IOW, like MC4D
does with the outside face.
* I understand that you wrote this mostly as a GUI feasibility study but
I encourage you to give some serious consideration to working out a UI
and implementation of a twist. I know that will be a huge task, and that
once you do that you’ll be all but compelled to turn it into a workable
puzzle and then compelled to solve it but it would still be way cool to
see some twists regardless of whether you ever take it further.

I’d been dismissing 5D cubes out-of-hand as hopeless the same way that
most people would dismiss 4D cubes. Thanks for building this and sharing
it with us. It’s making me rethink my assumptions.
-Melinda

Roice Nelson wrote:

> Well I must eat my words, or at least admit to being a little
> ridiculous because Remi’s enthusiasm gave me the bug again. I’ve
> relapsed slightly into my obsessive compulsive rubik’s disorder by
> doing some hobby programming this past week to create a MagicCube5D
> proof of concept. This will allow 2^5 through 5^5, has some options
> to play with in terms of projections, and allows overall cube (view)
> rotations. There is no twisting yet, but it makes me believe such a
> puzzle is plenty possible. I’m not sure yet if I want to do any more
> than this, but I did want to share what is here with you guys.
>
> I posted a couple screen shots and an install here if you are interested:
>
> http://www.gravitation3d.com/magiccube5d/
> <http://www.gravitation3d.com/magiccube5d/>
>
> A couple quick comments on it…
>
> Left mouse dragging will rotate the view and right mouse dragging will
> zoom (3D transformations only).
>
> The full view rotations are done by selecting 2 axes and then pressing
> a button. Using 2 axes is the proper extension to higher dimensions,
> and the way to think about it is that a rotation transforms a set of
> points in a plane. So for example, if this were a 3D puzzle and you
> wanted to do the rotation you typically think of as about the z axis,
> you would select x and y as your 2 axes to define the rotation plane.
> You could think of the rotation axis as being the rotation plane
> normal vector, but in the case of a 5D cube, there are 3 normal
> vectors to a given rotation plane.
>
> I made the projection distance for 4D and 5D separately changeable to
> avoid direct face overlapping problems if that is desired. Some of
> the other options were just made in the effort to try and find out how
> to make enough space for this puzzle.
>
> Enjoy :)
>
> Roice
>