Long term timeline for 1-look CFOP / ZB to overtake 3-style as the mainstream 3BLD method

[abunickabhi]

3-style has proved to be a very successful method and a perfect improvement to the ancient methods of freestyle and BH (Beyer Hardwick). With the advent of fast solvers like Yiheng and Xuanyi who can one look F2L with ease within 15 seconds, it is a matter of time before 3-style gets overtaken by 1-look CFOP as the mainstream method for blindsolving.

The pros and cons of 1-look CFOP eventually becoming mainstream (according to me) are:

Pros:

• Execution movecount would be 40-60 moves instead of ~80-120 moves in current 3-style exec.
• Higher TPS turning would be possible due to RUF face turning compared to MES slice exec and RUD corner exec.
• The number of algs to know would be far lesser, as just ZBLS and ZBLL would suffice, contrary to FFUF3, LTCT and parity algs for 3-style solving.
• Single solving method for both events (3x3 and 3BLD), making more cubers get started with blindsolving without any extra knowledge.
  

Cons:

• Accuracy will drop as mistakes in predicting LL might happen.
• Learning curve would be huge as tracing ability would not develop for every cuber interested in blindsolving.
• Memo time would increase from current ~5-6 seconds to ~10-15 seconds.
• For harder scrambles, 1-look CFOP would be harder.
• Tougher to do MBLD with 1-look CFOP as there are just mental notes for solutions and no mnemonic information coded for each scramble.
• 4BLD exec would still use 3-style and 2BLD and 3BLD would become a standalone events where 1-looking sighted methods are used.
• Would make 3BLD event redundant and eventually dropped off from the WCA list (similar to how 2BLD feels like a useless/redundant event now)
  
  
  There are a few more pointers that I want to deliberate over before adding here, I will edit the post in the future and add them.
  The timeline I predict when 1-look CFOP becomes mainstream is late 2020s, maybe 2028. 3-style method would still be used by current batch of BLDers, and people who are uncomfortable with predicting/tracing entire CFOP solutions.

 

[abunickabhi]

Considering how close Yiheng is to one looking an entire F2L solve, if you imagine countless Chinese prodigies trained from birth, eventually one of them will be able to 1-look an entire ZB solve and memorize the cube in 2 seconds or less, with a 3.5 second solve, so 5.5 is certainly possible and a 1.5 second memo and 3.0 second solve (4.5 seconds) is within human limits. It may be 10 years until we see that though. If anyone thinks that is unrealistic just look at pretty much any thread that is 10 years old and see how wrong they were.
Then if you consider the possibility of a ZBLL skip (1/1994), that would eventually happen too, in which case even faster would be achieved.

@efattah 5.5s one look CFOP solve seems insane yo!

 

[Deleted member 36445]

too much unnecessary mental work

CFOP was created for solving sighted and without having to create the whole solution from the beginning

trying to one look a CFOP solve puts too much stress to the brain, it is a inneficient way of solving blindfolded and makes memorization harder than it sould be.

it is just Objetivelly Unoptimal

it is a matter of time before 3-style gets overtaken by 1-look CFOP as the mainstream method for blindsolving.

nah. I don't think so. that's just a stupid statement to make

 

[abunickabhi]

too much unnecessary mental work

CFOP was created for solving sighted and without having to create the whole solution from the beginning

trying to one look a CFOP solve puts too much stress to the brain, it is a inneficient way of solving blindfolded and makes memorization harder than it sould be.

it is just Objetivelly Unoptimal



nah. I don't think so. that's just a stupid statement to make

I feel it is a lot scramble depedent if the top solvers can one the entire ZB solve.

Also it would be tough to get very fast memo times with this method and accuracy would be insanely low.

 

[Justincubes]

Memo time would increase from current ~5-6 seconds to ~10-15 seconds.

The increase in memo time alone makes this method impractical because cubers likely won't be getting 2 second execution times; 3 style is better (and faster) because of the balance between time for memo and execution.

 

[efattah]

I suppose there is a middle ground, though it is hard for us to even imagine. There seems to be no limit to what the human brain is capable of, and I suppose it is possible, with eyes closed, to begin the CFOP solve, (EYES CLOSED) and still track all the pieces as they move around. In that sense you would not need extra time to see all the way to the end of the solve, you are just keeping track of all unsolved pieces as they fly around. While that seems unrealistic, if you take a novice cuber and explain how Yiheng sees the entire F2L in advance, they would say that's not realistic.

Back in the early 1980's, my friends and I did some blindsolving competitions. No one could solve the whole cube blindfolded. We would memorize the cube, close our eyes and start solving while tracking as many pieces as we could until we lost track. We got farther than you would think. We did not use special BLD algs.

 

[Caleb Valenzuela]

I suppose there is a middle ground, though it is hard for us to even imagine. There seems to be no limit to what the human brain is capable of, and I suppose it is possible, with eyes closed, to begin the CFOP solve, (EYES CLOSED) and still track all the pieces as they move around. In that sense you would not need extra time to see all the way to the end of the solve, you are just keeping track of all unsolved pieces as they fly around. While that seems unrealistic, if you take a novice cuber and explain how Yiheng sees the entire F2L in advance, they would say that's not realistic.

Back in the early 1980's, my friends and I did some blindsolving competitions. No one could solve the whole cube blindfolded. We would memorize the cube, close our eyes and start solving while tracking as many pieces as we could until we lost track. We got farther than you would think. We did not use special BLD algs.

Yiheng knows the cube so well that he can track every piece easily. I wonder how come other top cubers haven’t been able to do 1-look solves yet…

 

[abunickabhi]

bo10 3blind (dual rounds) from 2026 in WCA comps is going to enable 1 look CFOP more, as only 10% accuracy would be needed.

 

[abunickabhi]

Seeing the recent video of Yiheng Wang and Yifan Wang doing BLD factory solve with 2-look, one look each.
Yiheng Wang did one look F2L and passed the cube to Yifan Wang who memorized the 1LLL as edge + corners commutators and executed them in one look.

This effort of CFOP being mainstream blind method in the future seems viable enough.

 

[SpeedCubingLord]

I feel it is a lot scramble depedent if the top solvers can one the entire ZB solve.

Also it would be tough to get very fast memo times with this method and accuracy would be insanely low.

And, because of this awesome community (mostly @Athefre ) we will optimize 1 look CFOP for 3BLD. So where do we start to optimize. Maybe LL should be done with algs that alter the cubes as little as possible. For example, instead of using r U R'U'r'F R F', we could use right sune and left sune.

 

[abunickabhi]

And, because of this awesome community (mostly @Athefre ) we will optimize 1 look CFOP for 3BLD. So where do we start to optimize. Maybe LL should be done with algs that alter the cubes as little as possible. For example, instead of using r U R'U'r'F R F', we could use right sune and left sune.

Doing LL using 4-6 comms is also fine

 

[efattah]

Honestly one look F2L still blows my mind beyond words. My only explanation is the child's brain developed as a cubing supercomputer that can track pieces almost unconsciously. This is similar to people who learn chess at a young age and can see approximately 7 moves into the future but not consciously, unconsciously, as there are countless billions of ways the 7 moves can happen and they don't have time to consciously evaluate them, but have 'good feelings' about certain moves.

 

[OtaMota]

 

[abunickabhi]

 

[Chris Choi]

not consistent enough. most scrambles have no hope of resolving the last layer with how complicated the f2l is. it will never happen

 

[Mike Hughey]

I have to agree it will probably never happen. The hard part is recognizing the last layer. The vast majority of the memorization time would be spent figuring out what the last layer case is going to be. If this is 5 seconds (which would be astounding), that would leave 3 seconds or so to memorize the F2L in order to be competitive with 3style, which can already result in 12 second solves. Memo has to be at most 9 seconds to match current world records. And I'm still not convinced 3style has reached its limit yet. If 3style can get sub-10, and I suspect it can, I really don't see how CFOP / ZB can possibly ever compete.

 

[abunickabhi]

EG overtook 3-style for 2blind in 2014ish when hardware and competitiveness started to increase.

I may be wrong on this as I have not validated the exact WBs for EG solves and 3s solves on a 2x2.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I have to agree it will probably never happen. The hard part is recognizing the last layer. The vast majority of the memorization time would be spent figuring out what the last layer case is going to be. If this is 5 seconds (which would be astounding), that would leave 3 seconds or so to memorize the F2L in order to be competitive with 3style, which can already result in 12 second solves. Memo has to be at most 9 seconds to match current world records. And I'm still not convinced 3style has reached its limit yet. If 3style can get sub-10, and I suspect it can, I really don't see how CFOP / ZB can possibly ever compete.

Interestingly, if I'm right about this, it means that if the cubing world had never made the rather arbitrary choice of having a 15 second inspection time, but had instead included inspection time in the solve time (justifiable, since you are indeed mentally starting to solve the puzzle as soon as you see it), it might have been eventually true that 3-style would wind up being the only way to hold the 3x3x3 world record, turning this whole question on its head - we might instead be asking if it would ever be possible for CFOP/ZB to again compete with 3-style for sighted solving!

 

[OtaMota]

Interestingly, if I'm right about this, it means that if the cubing world had never made the rather arbitrary choice of having a 15 second inspection time, but had instead included inspection time in the solve time (justifiable, since you are indeed mentally starting to solve the puzzle as soon as you see it), it might have been eventually true that 3-style would wind up being the only way to hold the 3x3x3 world record, turning this whole question on its head - we might instead be asking if it would ever be possible for CFOP/ZB to again compete with 3-style for sighted solving!

Max Park has 6-7 (meme unintentional, it was genuinely within that range) second solves of no-inspection with CFOP. I think it would be hard for 3-style to compete.

 

[abunickabhi]

Interestingly, if I'm right about this, it means that if the cubing world had never made the rather arbitrary choice of having a 15 second inspection time, but had instead included inspection time in the solve time (justifiable, since you are indeed mentally starting to solve the puzzle as soon as you see it), it might have been eventually true that 3-style would wind up being the only way to hold the 3x3x3 world record, turning this whole question on its head - we might instead be asking if it would ever be possible for CFOP/ZB to again compete with 3-style for sighted solving!

Wow that's an incredible worldview.

I feel that would have been a harder question to answer as there is no chance of including inspection time or tweaking inspection time.