A dog year is the square root of a computer year

Today at our lab we were comparing the performance of the Samsung S8 phone to the Galaxy Note 4. As it happens, my first SmartPhone was a Galaxy Note 4.

I only got it because it worked with the newly emerging GearVR, and in the second half of 2014 I wanted our lab to do untethered shared virtual reality. Back then, sticking OptiTrack motion capture marker on GearVRs was the easiest way.

Now, three years later, we are still using the GearVR for this, except now the OptiTracks have been replaced by Vive trackers (only available in the last few months), which are a lot less expensive than OptiTracks. Of course we’ve upgraded to the latest model SmartPhone — the S8.

The S8 is vastly faster than the Note 4 was. Which means everything works a lot better — graphics rendering, character movement, position tracking — all of the qualities that make for a good and immersive shared VR experience.

Today I was trying to convey to my students just how quickly all of this technology is advancing, thanks to good old Moore’s Law. “You know how a year is around seven dog years?” I said.

The students nodded. They all knew about that.

“Well,” I explained, “a dog year is basically around seven computer years. Which means that a year is around forty nine computer years.”

“In other words,” I continued, trying to put it into terms that would resonate with computer science students, “a dog year is the square root of a computer year.”

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