PROJECT SQLImaginarium – 1 Year Update

About

This is a post for T-SQL Tuesday #114 – Puzzle Party and is being hosted by @MattMcgiffen. Thanks Matthew!

TLDR; I have only moved the needle a little bit. If I’m being open and honest, not much interest has been expressed about this project. Using virtual reality (VR) to explain technical topics at times feels like a hammer in search of nails. But it works for me so I’m sticking with it and will continue to build on it.

Back Story

My post from one year ago: https://toddkleinhans.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/and-so-it-begins-project-sqlimaginarium/

I still believe in my key points in that post. Some of the tech has changed and I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Oculus Quest.

Today

My skills using Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) and VR have improved since last year. Note that I don’t use UE4 for a living- this is all in my spare time. No one is paying me to build this and I have other personal projects all vying for my time. The good news is that I have come up with a plethora of new ideas on how to solve certain problems that I didn’t have a clue about last year! And there have been some interesting new technologies which are soon to be available.

Pixel Streaming

One of the perennial challenges in video game distribution is just that- how does one easily get their game into the hands of its customers? And how to get it installed, does it meet certain prerequisites, etc.

I just so happen to be giving a presentation tonight at the Denver/Boulder Unreal Engine Group on this very topic: pixel streaming.

Key takeaway? NO SOFTWARE TO INSTALL!!! The caveat though is it might not support a really high frame rate. And you must be using a modern 64-bit browser. Here is a link to a company called FURIOOS. So what they do is spin up and tear-down a virtual machine w/ GPU PER SESSION. And it works on all devices including mobile. So if I can get a hold of a decent Azure vm with a NVIDIA GPU which supports NVENC then I might be able to play around with it.

If the set-up runs locally on a machine, then one could be a tour guide and have everyone see what you are wanting them to see. Very interesting possibilities! It will require a very high machine- think new laptop with RTX card or a desktop with a new RTX card. Something I do not have yet 🙂

Oculus Quest – No Guardian System

One should have the guardian system ON. Turning it off can lead to injuries. But as this video shows (in French but has English subtitles), one can literally walk around inside of a video game. So yes, I’m thinking about how this could be used to let people walk around and explore SQLImaginarium.

Call to Action

As I mentioned in my post from last year, I need ideas please. Use the hashtag #SQLImaginarium on Twitter to post if you have something to share. My dream is for this to eventually be a community project to help people learn and explore about our data platform.

Thanks!

–Todd Kleinhans