Message #1200

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: :-)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:25:28 -0700

This is interesting to me because of my experience with tuning the 4D
viewing parameters for my own use. Certainly some views are better than
others. I even had hopes that ones in which adjacent stickers are
exactly touching their neighbors might be good because that’s a closer
analog to the 3D puzzle, but that did not turn out to be the case. I
find that I like to move the puzzle around a lot while planning my next
steps, but I also know that Don likes to choose one static orientation
that lets him see every sticker, and then only perform 90 degree
rotations in 4D. I.E. using ctrl-click rotate a face to the center. So
certainly different people prefer different viewing parameters but
perhaps some collections of parameters are more or less ideal for most
people. If so, I’d certainly want to make those the default values at
the very least, and possibly even remove their UI controls or make them
into debugging or advanced options.

I feel towards the 5D puzzle much like I imagine a 3D solver must feel
when encountering the 4D puzzle for the first time. I understand how to
approach the problem of solving it but find that I have almost no idea
how to best choose viewing parameters and their interactions. I
therefore have two questions for everyone:

1) Would you please send me your "mc4d.props" file? It is probably in
the folder that contains the program. In your email, please also briefly
describe which of your preferences you adjust frequently and why. I’m
particularly interested in face-shrink and sticker-shrink.

2) For those of you who have solved or made serious attempts at 5D and
higher dimensional puzzles, there’s no need to send me your preferences
file though Roice may be interested in getting those. Still, I’d love
to hear more about which parameters you needed to tune permanently and
which you adjust frequently and why.

Feel free to reply privately or publicly to the list with your
descriptions. Just don’t send your files to the list.

I also wonder whether there might exist sets of viewing parameters that
are ideal across all dimensions, but that’s more of a blue-sky subject.
Who knows, maybe some day we’ll have a single implementation that has
the best UI for all possible puzzles across all possible dimensions!

-Melinda

On 10/12/2010 2:35 PM, Andras Ecseki wrote:
>
>
> That explains a lot, but it wasn’t obvious for me, because I used
> default parameters… ;-)
>
> A
>
>
>
> ————————————————————————
> *From:* Matthew <damienturtle@hotmail.co.uk>
> *To:* 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com
> *Sent:* Tue, October 12, 2010 8:25:41 PM
> *Subject:* [MC4D] Re: :-)
>
> Unsurprisingly I knew it to be the 7^5 in MC5D. I used view parameters
> which were obviously very similar to the ones shown in the video.
> Trying to find a workable view to this puzzle isn’t easy, and the fact
> that someone else independently picked the same view means that it is
> probably the best one to work with. I don’t think I have any
> screenshots from my solve on this computer to upload for comparison,
> but they would be almost identical anyway.
>
> Matt
>
> — In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com <mailto:4D_Cubing%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Andras Ecseki <andras_ecseki@…> wrote:
> >
> > ok, never mind me, its the MC5D, 7^5 puzzle, +U, -U, +V, -V faces
> turned off,
> > low 5d perspective point distance, small sticker size…
> >
>
>
>
>
>