Stan Trevena posted a couple of excellent blog entries here and here about Sun Microsystems’ new Wonderland/Darkstar virtual-worlds platform (YouTube video).
He also made some very good posts to the Second Life Educators (SLED) e-mail list here and here.
The questions of course are what is Sun doing with virtual worlds, what are Sun and the New Media Consortium doing together, and what are the implications for Second Life (as the virtual world most used for education currently)?
The following are some of Stan Trevena’s points:
o Second Life is currently like AOL in the early online days. Closed, proprietary. The Sun platform is like the Internet (open source, federated).
o External applications will be able to run inside. You’d be able to open a document or spreadsheet and work on it with other avatars.
o The Sun platform is currently in v0.3. So much work is still ahead.
o Users will create content outside the Sun platform and bring it in. They will use 3D tools such as Autodesk Maya, Blender, and Google Sketchup.
o The Sun platform will allow the design and deployment of specifically-designed virtual spaces. This should drive a lot of service offerings and innovations by consultants and developers.
o Sun is promoting 3D standards. Sun is promoting standards in security, applications, 3D file formats, and content creation for interoperability and transferability of 3D content.
There are lots of questions and lots of ways things could unfold.
But rather than signaling the end of Second Life, more likely this is part of the beginning of a big new era for virtual worlds.
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