Sun's Wonderland

Project Wonderland is a new Java-based open source (Gnu GPL v2) toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds. Sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Wonderland has many very powerful features that make it a potentially useful virtual machine-based platform for creating virtual worlds that organizations can rely on as places to conduct, as Sun says, "real business". Within Wonderland virtual worlds, users are able to communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio, and can share live applications such as web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games. This functionality is why Wonderland was recently chosen along with Second Life and Croquet as the immersive education platforms that will be receiving support from the Media Grid Institute. As with Second Life, Wonderland worlds are reliant on server infrastructures to support their basic use. By promoting the use of virtual worlds and giving away the client technology as open source, Sun is attempting to broadly increase demand for their servers. An interesting strategy...