Chessvision is a new chess program from Microvision, and Netherlands-based company. It happens to be the first software that integrates a chess database, playing program and Internet Chess Server interface all into one program. The user interface is object-oriented, and quite a switch from the current paradigm.
There are four important elements in the Chessvision interface – graphical chess boards, chess engines, info-views, and ICS interfaces. An info-view is a window that can display many kinds of data, including:
- The moves of the current game
- A chess tree
- Comments for the current game
- Game lists
- Opening information on the current game
- Opening lists
- Lists of players
The user also can select which databases are ‘connected’ to the info-view. For instance, the chess tree info-view can be formed from single or multiple databases. Generally speaking, if you can do an operation in the program with a single database, you can use multiple databases also.
If there are move lists or game commentary included in the info-view, then it will follow the currently active graphical board. Engines are also attached to boards – i.e. you start an engine, then tell it to follow the position on an active board. As I mentioned previously, you can also open (multiple) ICS clients in the program. The interface is similar to Blitzin, with a seek graph and telnet window.
You can conduct database searches on one or many databases. Searches by position, material, and header are all supported, but the format is a little different than you may be used to, if you have been using another program.
You can also play a game against any winboard compatible engine. Chessvision comes with two versions of Crafty, but you can add other engines quite easily. Settings like time controls, search depth, hash table size, and permanent brain, can be controlled by the program. Other settings can be controlled via initialization files.
I found two omissions, which may or may not be important, depending on your point of view. The first is that you cannot print a game or board position from the program. The other limitation is that you cannot incorporate informant symbols into the game score.
Personally, I found Chessvision useful for watching internet games - because of the ability to have winboard engines examining the game at the same time. You can also observe multiple games at one time with the interface, all while running a separate engine for each board.
Serious users will appreciate a powerful PGN import facility (that allows for user-specified import conventions, so that non-standard games can be imported), and the engine vs. engine tournament system.
Strengths
- The program is very consistent and logical in it’s operation. Microvision has done a good job bringing object-oriented programming to the chess database. But be warned that if you have been using other database products, you may have to readjust to a different way of doing things.
- The program has a nice, clean engine vs. engine tournament system. If you are looking for an easy way to conduct winboard tournaments, then you will like this feature. Microvision maintains a site where you can download the latest initialization files for winboard engines. So users do not have to fool with making initialization files (even though this is quite easy and well-documented).
- All the basic winboard engine parameters are controllable, and I suspect you could use the initialization files to control other parameters.
- The program is quite stable.
- There are interesting ways to view the tree display – it is easy to look at the complete path taken to a particular position, for instance.
- Using the openings tree, you can see a tree of openings that essentially shows you how the game transposed from one opening system to another – this was very nifty.
- Multiple engines can be run at the same time, this is handy for observing ICS games, or conducting your own analysis.
- The program has a very flexible tree that can be formed from any number of open databases.
- The program does multiple database operations (like searches) very easily.
- A significant amount of time that has gone into the creation of the included database. I did not find any duplicate games, or players.
- Chessvision has very strong PGN and text import capabilities.
- There is built in doubles detection, and player library maintenance.
- When playing a game online, the engine analysis display for that game is temporarily disabled, although analysis continues in the background. After you are done playing the game, the display is re-enabled, and you can click on a bar graph showing the principal variation score for each move in the game. In this way, you can quickly go to critical points in the game (let’s say where someone screwed up).
- You can save window layouts in the program. What this means is the following: Say you are analyzing a game, and you need to go work on another game for a few minutes. You can save your window layout, go work on your other game, and then restore the layout – everything will be at the exact position when the save occurred, along with all the info-views, board windows, etc.
Weaknesses
- The program could use a help file. It has an online assistant, but some introductory text on basic program operation would be helpful. Microvision has informed me that this is in the works.
- The program needs a window list, or some other navigational tool for keeping track of, and moving between the various windows that are open. Microvision is looking into adding this feature. In the mean time, you can avoid some problems by using the layouts feature.
- Annotation with informant symbols is not supported.
- You cannot print games or board diagrams.
- There is no drag-and-drop of moves between games.
- There is no drag-and-drop for copying/moving games.
- There is no way to reorder variations once they are in the game score.
- There is no way to build an ECO-style table.
- It would be nice if the ICS interface had a scrollable list of available players.
- There does not seem to be any way to manage/correct tournament names (although you can search for tournaments). If you are a person that mostly buys high quality game collections, then I would not worry about this.
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