Message #525

From: Roice Nelson <roice3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Did I Hear MC6D??
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 14:56:23 -0500

I don’t think MC6D is in development, and the discussion about really making
one isn’t serious, but interesting for sure! For myself, I also don’t think
the puzzle would be fun ;) But anyway, Nelson Makes a good point about the
problem of too many centrally projected axes. I actually did a little proof
of concept investigation of the MC6D display a while ago (very little code
was required), and so I can show a few screen shots. These would be a
display of 3^6 where all stickers are drawn as points (instead of
5-cubes). I’m attaching 3 pics, the first with the 3 higher-d axes all
centrally projected, the second with 2 of 3 centrally projected, and the
third with only 1 of 3 centrally projected. The offsets of the projection
points from center in the latter two cases were just given some arbitrary
values, as there could be a lot of choices. This is as far as I wanted to
take it myself, but I’m happy to send anyone the 100 or so lines of code I
hacked into MC5D to produce these if they wanted to take it any further.

Btw, when I had looked at this, I came to the conclusion that I liked MC5D
with the uv axes both centrally projected better than giving one an off axes
projection, so I didn’t take any time to try to add extended projection
possibilities as a feature (How would the UI provide a nice way to choose
the offset anyway?). I just made one more screen shot with an example
non-central MC5D projection. I’ve always liked the look of 4-cubes
centrally projected better as well, maybe because I perceive it as appearing
more symmetrical. But I do think in the MC4D case, it could be a cool
extension nonetheless… I just saw Melinda’s email, so I think I’ll go add
this to the group wish-list :)

Roice

<spel_werdz_rite@…> wrote:
>
> The problem a 6D puzzle is positioning. If you notice in the 5D cube,
> the U and V faces all lie in a fixed point. However if you were to dig
> into the details of dimensional analysis, they should technically be
> able to move about space as freely as the X,Y, and Z faces. Adding two
> new faces on the next dimension would cause a confusing image if done
> the same way the 5D cube was done. This is in no way a criticism of
> MC5D because it’s not so bad with 4 faces in one place. Sure one could
> consider hiding faces as done in MC5D, but I for one feel it would
> just be a little frustrating in 6-dimensions. Plus, every face would
> have a 3x3 square arranges in a 3x3x3 array. That would be nasty, yes?
> However I do feel that if some kinks were worked out, it would be a
> very fun puzzle!
>
"noel.chalmers" <ltd.dv8r@…> wrote:
>
> Are we seriously talking about a 6D puzzle? Trying to explain the 4D
> and 5D was hard enough, lol. Well pushing the boundary is what you
> guys have proven to be very good at, so I wouldn’t be surprised to
> hear that indeed the MC6D is under production.
>
> As for the puzzle itself, I have to say that it would be completely
> ridiculous. Using Roice’s method for a 3x3, it would take an average
> person about 100 moves to solve the 3D cube, 1000 moves to solve the
> 4D, 10000 to solve the 5D. So I would guess it would take around
> 100000 moves to solve the 6D cube. Considering it only took me 26000
> to solve the 5^5, 100000 moves seems a bit steep. That being said, if
> you do end up making the MC6D, I’ll definitely be making a go at it. :)
>
> Cheers,
> Noel
>