[party_possum]

The idea of incorporating actual hold data and "recognizing" specific holds is interesting, but I'm not sure it completely solves the problem.

The "Boss" from Pusher is arguably the most famous climbing hold ever made. For a decade or more, every gym had one, but they were all unique. Lots of them had micro chips that became critical to usage of the hold. Some had decent texture and some were glassy smooth from years and years and years of use. A lot of the accidental variation in new holds has gone away as the industry has standardized around a handful of industrial fabricators like Aragon, but even over the course of a single indoor boulder problem's life, the accumulation of chalk, sweat, and shoe rubber can have a significant impact on how a hold climbs.

I guess the real question is, do these changes just make routes harder or do they make them fundamentally different? Do they actually change the set of moves that constitutes the easiest way to the top? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. But it's something interesting to think about.

[alexcp_]

Exactly, holds will evolve as they get used and more polished, even indoors. Climbing a Moonboard with a new set of holds is quite different than climbing on one with older more polished holds, even if it's the exact same problem and the same holds.

It's an interesting project and it could be fun to watch, but it's completely useless.

[ethbr1]

Couldn't you reverse-reason about that?

To me, the customer here would be climbing gyms, offering a service to climbers.

   1. Set up camera on routes
   2. Record all climbs
   3. Reason through hold details
   4. Generate potential movements
   5. Show climbs vs ghost movements
   6. Feedback to tune model

3 being accomplished by reasoning "if a movement should be possible using the identified hold, but no one successfully does it, the hold must be misidentified or have different properties."

[alexcp_]

But what is the point? Finding the optimal movements that are needed to complete a climb is not useful if you are not strong enough to execute it.

[ethbr1]

The point in this thread seemed to be "real world holds have different properties, and that defines possible approaches to holds."

To which I pointed out that, with enough data, you could reason backwards to figure out their properties.

Assuming that's solved, if the question is "What is the point?" then I'd answer the same point as golf swing analysis -- structured comparison feedback for continual improvement.

"Have you thought about trying X move at Y point?" or "You're trying X move at Y point, but here's how you differ from someone successfully doing it" both seem useful feedback.

And essentially what's manually generated now, from someone watching and then providing feedback.

With regards to strength, hell, if you wanted to get fancy you could also deduce a specific user's strength, comparing their moves against others' moves on the same features.

[jfengel]

Huh. I recognize it but didn't know its name. (I don't know any of the names.) Route setting sounds fascinating.