Facebook Oculus invented a new time unit called the ‘flick’

A flick (frame-tick) is a very small unit of time. It is 1/705600000 of a second, exactly.

1 flick = 1/705600000 second

Here’s a list of numbers into which 1/706,600,000 divides evenly: 8, 16, 22.05, 24, 25, 30, 32, 44.1, 48, 50, 60, 90, 100, 120.


Motivation

When working creating visual effects for film, television, and other media, it is common to run simulations or other time-integrating processes which subdivide a single frame of time into a fixed, integer number of subdivisions. It is handy to be able to accumulate these subdivisions to create exact 1-frame and 1-second intervals, for a variety of reasons.

Knowing that you should never, ever use floating point representations for accumulated, simulated time (lest your temporal accuracy degrade over time), the std::chrono time tools in C++ are ideal. However, the highest usable resolution, nanoseconds, doesn't evenly divide common film & media framerates. This was the genesis of this unit.

https://github.com/OculusVR/Flicks

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/22/facebook-invented-a-new-time-unit-called-the-flick-and-its-truly-amazing

Computer Vision Tech Grabs Humans In Real-Time 3D

From Slashdot:
Computer Vision Tech Grabs Humans In Real-Time 3D 

Tinkle writes "Toshiba's R&D Labs in Cambridge, UK have developed a system capable of real-time 3D modeling of the human face and body — using a simple set of three different colored lights. Simple it may be, but the results are impressive. Commercial applications for computer vision technology look set to be huge — according professor Roberto Cipolla. On the horizon: cheap and easy digitized everyday objects for ecommerce, plus gesture-based interfaces — a la Natal — and in-car safety systems. Ultimately even driver-less cars. 'This is going to be the decade of computer vision,' predicts Cipolla."

From Esquire

We've Seen the Future, and It's Unmanned

Every so often in history, something profound happens that changes warfare forever. Next year, for the first time ever, the Pentagon will buy more unmanned aircraft than manned, line-item proof that we are in a new age of fighting machines, in which war will be ever more abstract, ever more distant, and ruthlessly efficient.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/unmanned-aircraft-1109-4

The cameras aren't just watching insurgents. The real-time videos allow commanders to see and direct movement at the lowest levels. On today's battlefields, when isolated actions can have enormous impact, there are times when you want higher-ups giving the go-ahead before a missile flattens a house. But the up-close image from a UAV can lead to a false sense of clarity, making a choice seem obvious when it's not. Someone watching an operation from miles away can't sense other critical factors, like the mood of locals or the difficulty of crossing rough terrain. "Sometimes it's more of a pain in the ass than anything," a captain in Afghanistan told me.

Realtime 3D video

Update: Realtime 3D for you too!

Read http://hackaday.com/2009/12/30/update-realtime-3d-for-you-too/


3D Capture at 60fps from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

[Kyle McDonald] has kept himself busy working on 3D scanning in realtime. He’s posted a writeup that takes us through the concepts, tools, and assembly of a DIY 3d scanning camera. You should remember a preview of this method posted earlier this month, but now it’s time to build your own. You’ll need a camera, a projector, and some open source software to process the image data. Using these simple tools, [Kyle] turned out much better video than before. Take a look after the break to see his results from scanning at 60 fps using a PS3 Eye. The trick to this setup is getting the correct synchronization between the projector and the camera, something that could be improved with a bit of extra hacking.