Comments on: Alice Chess Set -- chessmen vanish into opaque blocks when out of play

By: eustace

eustace — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of contacts, I would bet on inductive power coupling.
I love how the set looks, but in use this would be nothing but annoying.

By: Cefeida

Cefeida — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

WANT!

I’ll add it to the list of things I’ll buy some day when I’m super rich.

By: help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread

help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That’s so cool… I wanted to find out more about this Mirona stuff, but nothing shows up on Google…

By: Quothz

Quothz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#11, the design calls for the LEDs to be in the board, not the pieces.

By: Sean Grimm

Sean Grimm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t have anyone I play chess with but I still would love to have one of these sets…even if there are more responsible things to spend money on.

By: TopRamen

TopRamen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@#1 umm…they DID make it. They weren’t just randomly name dropping.
Quote:
“The Chessboard IS MADE out of LightPoints a material manufactured by Schott, which is glass that has LED’s embedded in it; the pieces are coated with Mirona, a Material that turns transparent when light shines through it. When the piece is placed on the board it completes the circuit and lights up the LED under it turning it transparent, like magic.”

Plus the picture of two people using it is a dead giveaway.

By: fencesitter

fencesitter — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mirona, a Material that turns transparent when light shines through it

Sounds like some Heisenberg-like material. How can you tell it’s not transparent when there’s no light shining through it?

By: jedhed

jedhed — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This reminded me of those cool photo puzzles about Alice that appeared in Games Magazine in the 1980s.

I didn’t realize that Walter Wick (the creator) has gone on to have a successful, the “I Spy” and “Can You See What I See?” books

Small scan of one of his Alice puzzles can be seen here on this page of his site:

http://www.walterwick.com/Games.htm

By: kaiza

kaiza — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@#3 Pixels, in my time, etc., etc.

Plus I’m an Industrial Design student. If I didn’t know a crappy glass render from a CAD program when I saw one then I don’t deserve to be a designer.

Like I said, I LIKE the concept – i.e. the underlying rationale of the design. But the actual details are sketchy – LightPoints glass has LED’s embedded in the glass with what looks like an air gap, then a near-invisible conductive layer. I don’t see any embedded LED’s in the pieces. I also don’t see any contacts for transferring power to the pieces. Sure it could be induction, but the board is a pane of glass….

Moulding the glass pieces as shown would also be problematic, if I understand correctly that they are meant to be hollow. Moulding something like that into the glass without having to glue two sides together is impossible unless you use a lost casting method of some sort, but then the finish becomes an issue.

@#4 take a look at the second link I posted – theres a demo vid on YouTube. The material is nothing special – it’s the same as mirroring on sunglasses, camera lenses and shiny gift wrap – you can see through it when the light source on the other side is brighter than the light on your side. Mirona looks like it is simply being marketed specifically for TV screens, which puts it firmly in the “completely useless crap” basket for me.

All I’m saying is that if this were actually made, today, it would look very different to the renders shown above.

By: fancyfeast

fancyfeast — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The pictures of people playing it are clearly photoshop mockups. Sweet design, but not reality.

By: Mazoola

Mazoola — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m still open on the question of whether or not it was actually prototyped, but the reason for name-dropping the tech behind it is simple: It was a competition sponsored by Schott, maker of both LightPoints and Mirona.

By: Mazoola

Mazoola — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I take it back: Never built; only a mock-up (he sez, 6″ from the monitor, sans contacts).

By: Jamie Sue

Jamie Sue — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

WANT (as rendered)

By: Lis Riba

Lis Riba — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Must be a real pain to set up the chessboard, if all the pieces look identical until they’re on the board…

By: kaiza

kaiza — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Great ideas are a dime a dozen. The devil, as always, is in the details.

I really do love the idea, and it would be possible to make, but name dropping random tech is often a giveaway that the designer doesn’t have even half a clue on how the tech or the design actually works.

For the interested:

http://www.schott.com/architecture/english/lightsolutions/lightpoints.html?highlighted_text=lightpoint
http://www.mirropane.com/mirona.htm

Was gonna write more but must… not… rage…