Who invented these balls, was this intended?
- Thread starter asbani
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I hated that about that set too. Maybe the are better in green cloth?
Everyone knows they are terrible to see, impossible to call correctly for the commentators, thats obvious after listening for 10 minutes. But none of that matters, they must have produced a zillion sets and they are out to sell them.
Why they would have pastel colors that meld together on tv is beyond me.
Why they would have pastel colors that meld together on tv is beyond me.
So funny to read, I was in 8 ball finals of west coast challenge last year and ran out only to have my opponent tell me I forgot the same weird color 7 ball! Diamond tables, blue cloth. I almost did it again in team play. I hate those easter egg looking balls
West coast challenge in Florida u talking about?
Which 7-ball...? :shrug::scratchhead::shrug:
Maybe the commentators should just be replaced. They've had over a year to get these balls right.
Or maybe accu-stats just isn't that clear. I watch the pro events in Taiwan on VLSports on YouTube. Same balls, blue cloth. Never hard to tell them apart.
I can't believe the stupidity of spending money on research to find the best color cloth to use on television, and then UNBELIEVABLY make a ball set with colors that cannot be easily distinguished on that very cloth, or most other for that matter! How bloody hard could it be to make a ball set that actually works as intended, doesn't roll off and confuse everybody as well? They couldn't find some kind of out of work psychologist, optometrist or even a design person with common sense to select the colors? Or god forbid: They couldn't ask someone who ACTUALLY PLAYS pool, instead of design people watching the balls rotate in glorious 3D on their computer screen with black backgrounds...Some times I think there might not be any hope at all for humanity. We can't even get the simple, unimportant things right. Imagine when the same caliber of person is assigned to something important..oh wait, you don't have to.........
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Ha! If dennis miller played pool, I imagined his voice and this rant. Excellent take, my friend. I absolutely concur.
Without a doubt this is how it is. And I can even forgive a non pool player executive making the suggestion. But for them to not do a test run, float a few sets out at a big event and then collect players, spectators, camera operators, etc points of view before they make a permanent decision is unforgiveable.
And there is a bit of stubborness involved too.this problem is not new, they have traditional color sets, but yet, they still push these pastels out to the public eye.
Their motives are suspect
THE TENNIS BALL IS NOT WHITE (or skittle color) LoL
Blue is not the best color cloth. It is for tennis (which is the results they used), however one key factor was overlooked......THE TENNIS BALL IS NOT WHITE (or skittle color).
It's an honest mistake, however.......
I played with these "skittle balls" and was lucky to only shoot the 7 before the 6 one time.....I thought about it several time though. Why on earth would anyone make the 7 ball that color, it's just too strange to imagine. LoL :shrug:
Blue is not the best color cloth. It is for tennis (which is the results they used), however one key factor was overlooked......THE TENNIS BALL IS NOT WHITE (or skittle color).
It's an honest mistake, however.......
I played with these "skittle balls" and was lucky to only shoot the 7 before the 6 one time.....I thought about it several time though. Why on earth would anyone make the 7 ball that color, it's just too strange to imagine. LoL :shrug:
Actually blue background with white writing is the most restful to your eyes, which is why people looking at screens with writing on for prolonged periods of times use this combination. So the blue/white combination is actually quite good, both for contrast and lessened eye fatigue. But the skittle balls....omg. What the H were they thinking?!
maybe it's just me...but i've played somewhere around 12 hours worth of pool with the skittle balls and i've not once shot a ball out of rotation...nor left a solid on the table and shot the 8 when playing 8 ball. maybe the issue here is, in reality, that people need to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THEY ARE DOING when they are at the table instead of just blaming the ball set. novel concept.
i actually found that very thin cut shots proved easier with the skittles set...not sure if it was just the ball or the colors, but on both blue and green cloth i felt like i could see the edges better for some reason. oh well...just my opinion on both points.
i actually found that very thin cut shots proved easier with the skittles set...not sure if it was just the ball or the colors, but on both blue and green cloth i felt like i could see the edges better for some reason. oh well...just my opinion on both points.
Ron Swanson
Banned
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
Well, that's all well and good...But really, why not play with traditional colors if distinguishing between the balls in a real setting is all you are trying to achieve? Very few people make mistakes with these colors anyway.
Aramith made the tv-set to make the colors stand out more on tv and they did actual R & D on the subject. You may agree or disagree on the effectiveness of this, but I feel that on the old low quality streams it was an advantage over the traditional color scheme. The skittle balls are no better than any of the other sets in any of the possible settings, and they are new which leads to confusion in commentary situations. I'm not saying that this is not dumb, but it is what it is. Some people are just not good at adapting to changes, and that should be realized when a new industry standard is being pushed. Why do you think we are still using qwerty keyboards?
A minor point to some would be that the cueball rolls off... Of course a traditionalist like myself feels that the cueball should roll straight unless spin dictates otherwise, but that may just be me. I realize that on this forum that is a minority opinion. Still it is one I hold with conviction.
So in conclusion: Changes should be made if and only if they can offer some improvement over existing designs AND that improvement is worth the cost that the change will entail. (Commentator confusion, mistakes made by players in crucial situations etc.) IMHO the skittle ball colors do not improve ball recognition (in fact they make it harder on tv!) and confuse some commentators and the FRACKING CUEBALL ROLLS OFF! My last post on the subject. End of rant.
edit: PS: In my army days we would often use US equipment and laugh amongst ourselves at the "DO NOT EAT", "THIS SIDE TOWARDS ENEMY" etc. legends on nearly every piece of equipment. Our friends and allies did apparently not think too highly of their soldiers was the joke. (Actually an army iq test performed showed a widespread (nearly uniform) low level of performance especially from personel from certain regions of the US. Instead of questioning the validity of the test they immidiately jumped to the conclusion that the soldiers were mostly dim witted, lol). The point is that my army comrades and I were the ones who were wrong. It takes forsight and intelligence both to see that a certain percentage of personel WILL in fact be on the lower end of the iq scale, have a harder time learning etc AND that people in stressful situations can make uncharacteristic errors. This applies to other areas of life as well...
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