Are pillowed cubes the future of speedcubing ?

[Adranir]

Hello everyone !

First of all, my apologies for my broken english, that is my second language, thanks for your comprehension.

For a while, well, since pillowed cubes are allowed, I've been thinking about it.

With a pillow cube, you can see more pieces than without, if you look straight at it, you can see 1 full faces (the F one), and 2 thirds of each adjacent faces for a 3*3 (U, R, D and L).
Technically, we see only half of it (with all cubes), but on a 3*3, if you see half of a face, you know the pieces for 2 thirds of this face (even if you already know what the centers are, it means that you can see 28 stickers (without the centers) while looking straight at it, whereas a you can only see 24 on a flat 3*3 (again, without centers))

For now, pillowed cubes are BAD, so it's not a thing that we can do right now, but as time passes, cubes designs become more and more complicated, with less and less improvement each time, so that could be an easier way to improve them.

The only problem is : the grip
Obviously, if your cube is so pillowed that it's a sphere, yeah, no grip, impossible to do finger tricks etc, but if it's just a little pillowed (enough to see what I said earlier), it's still a bit difficult, but feasable, but even then, you can improve the grip, for example, with little "edges" on the pieces (like on some megaminx), or with a textured face (like the ShengShou diamond 3*3, that I think is allowed).

So, in conclusion, do you think that pillowed cubes could become an "easy" way to improve speedcubes while we strugle to make new designs ? Let me know what you think !

 

[One Wheel]

I don’t think so. The grip issue is real, and not easy to solve. More significantly, you’re right that you could theoretically see more stickers on a pillowed cube, but all but the very near edge stickers are going to be at such a low angle that it would be hard to identify similar colors. If you need to turn the cube to see those stickers more clearly you have negated all the benefit of a pillowed cube. Not only that, but you need to turn the cube further to see the rest of the stickers on that side, so it’s even worse. I think basically cubic cubes are the future, although there is certainly room to play with textures and ridges.

 

[Tony Fisher]

No. Where cubic puzzles are available it surely goes against the spirit of the event? It would open the door to new cleverly designed shapes to help with handling and seeing. Soon the cube shape would vanish from the events. I'm pretty sure pillowed 7x7x7s were only ever allowed because for a long time only a pillowed version existed.

 

[Underwatercuber]

No. Where cubic puzzles are available it surely goes against the spirit of the event? It would open the door to new cleverly designed shapes to help with handling and seeing. Soon the cube shape would vanish from the events. I'm pretty sure pillowed 7x7x7s were only ever allowed because for a long time only a pillowed version existed.

Doesn’t matter if it’s against the spirit of the event or not if it gives an advantage

That being said I don’t think this will ever become a thing just because it’s harder to grip

 

[One Wheel]

No. Where cubic puzzles are available it surely goes against the spirit of the event? It would open the door to new cleverly designed shapes to help with handling and seeing. Soon the cube shape would vanish from the events. I'm pretty sure pillowed 7x7x7s were only ever allowed because for a long time only a pillowed version existed.

I think you’re right about the reasons for allowing pillowed 7x7s, but I don’t think that opening up that opening up regulations to allow any shape would result in significant deviation from the shape of cubes that we have now.

 

[GenTheSnail]

The only thing that I can see potentially happening is larger ridges so that one can see the side of piece over the edge line. This already happens to a very small degree with stickerless cubes.

I don't think traditional pillowed cubes will ever take off. The trade off of grip over visibility isn't large enough.

 

[Underwatercuber]

I think you’re right about the reasons for allowing pillowed 7x7s, but I don’t think that opening up that opening up regulations to allow any shape would result in significant deviation from the shape of cubes that we have now.

Other shapes are allowed with current regs and nothing has really changed so you are right (for now at least)

 

[Skewbed]

If anything, concave cubes would be better. They have better grip. This has already happened with Skewb, and it is starting to happen with 3x3 (ridges on the GTS3).

Cubic shapes have been shown to be good, though, and I don't see anything getting too concave.

 

[Capcubeing]

No I do not think pillowed cubes will become popular. When I think pillowed Vcubes come to mind and that gives me nightmares.