Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Sensory Board Problem?

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 17:28:33 01/19/99

Go up one level in this thread


On January 19, 1999 at 19:49:26, Michael Ginat wrote:

>It seems that there are now only two boards commercially available. It seems to
>me that there should be a huge market for a board that would work with any PC or
>Windows program. You'd think that in 1999 the technology could not be THAT
>difficult!

Michael,

The technology is probably not that difficult. The problem is the demand. You
know many chess players and how many do you know that own chess playing
software? Probably most of them. Now how many do you know that own a sensory
board? Probably very few. The demand for sensory boards is just not there at the
current prices. Most people can get away with either looking at the screen or at
making all of the moves manually on a board (which you have to do anyway with a
sensory board) and half of the moves within a program. Granted, having a real
clock is nice and tournament-like, but sensory boards just do not have enough
functionality for the price within the market.

Sorry I cannot answer any of your questions below, but I had problems finding
out the cost of the DGT board, let alone what software hooks up to it.

There is also a potential (small) flaw with using a sensory board (at least I
assume that it is there, someone can tell me if I'm full of it since I do not
have one and cannot test it out).

The computer opponent announces the move (via the speakers with the DGT board),
it takes the player a moment to make the move, but in the meantime, your clock
is running (assuming no delay placed on the clock). I assume that most of the
tournaments it was testing in had delays on the clock and that this would not be
noticed.

Granted, I do not know this for fact and someone with a board can test it out.
However, it seems to me that this would be the case. The reason I make this
assumption is that if it did not work this way, every chess program would have
to have a "default amount of time" before it started it's clock since the person
playing the game may not move the pieces immediately. I'm making the assumption
that the time involved is 0 seconds. If the chess program gets the time
information from the DGT clock connected to the board (which is not a
requirement for using the board), then that clock would have to either detect
that the piece was moved (and then change) or it would have to default to
changing after a set amount of time (possibly 0 seconds).

Otherwise, the person playing could have a time advantage (if he had left the
room or something for example).

If I'm mistaken, someone please let me know. I have been interested in
purchasing a sensory board, was unsure whether it would work properly when the
clock has no delay. To me, a half second pause before changing from the chess
programs clock to the human players clock after announcing the move would be
more reasonable (and tournament realistic) than a zero second pause (assuming
the clock is not set up with a delay). The human, of course, would still have to
hit the clock (if there is one there) or should also have a half second pause
(after the board detects that the piece was moved) if running on the computer's
clock.

KarinsDad

>
>Does anyone have any experience with the Novag board? They claim to have put out
>a new driver for Fritz/16 with more to come.
>
>Also, has anyone tested DGT's claim that they have a driver which will support
>all windows based programs? Would that include 32 bit versions?
>
>Any feedback appreciated.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.