Not many people can say they have created a unit of time, but recently a Facebook engineer did that exact notion, by creating a new unit of time called a flick.
The flick was designed to help keep developers sync their video effects which in turns helps create better VR content, videos and clips. A flick is derived from the frame tick, which is 1/705,600,000 of a second, which is the next unit of time after a nanosecond.
We’ve launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies. https://t.co/w9SDBznXRE
— Facebook Open Source (@fbOpenSource) January 22, 2018
Flicks will give programmers a way to measure the time between media frames without using fractions, which reduces errors such as stutters in graphics fidelity.
“When the numbers used are not integers, errors can gradually creep into computer calculations. These errors can build up over time, eventually causing inaccuracies that become noticeable,” said Matt Hammond, the lead research engineer at BBC Research and Development.
Flick’s creator, Cristopher Horvath had publicly shared his idea on Facebook back in early 2017, whereby he had then made modifications to the new measurement based on feedback from the comments.
Source: BBC