Project Wonderland vs. Second Life

There's been growing interest by educators in MUVE's other than Second Life: OpenSim, Project Wonderland, Qwaq, Croquet etc. This past week, I (again) attended the Sled Roundtable that AJ Brooks (pictured left in suit, RL: AJ Kelton) hosts each Tuesday at Montclair State University (3:30 SLT). The focus of the discussion was Project Wonderland and other open grid/source alternatives to Second Life, and on short notice, Alan Levine (SL: CDB Barkley, pictured left in red) joined the group as a guest speaker. The conversation, for me, confirmed a few thoughts I noted previously, pinpointed perhaps the primary purpose of Wonderland, and ultimately helped frame the virtual environment landscape a little better while perhaps providing a longer term answer to the question I asked back in December.

First, Alan confirmed several of my initial thoughts regarding Project Wonderland. When asked how Project Wonderland is different from Second Life, Alan commented that Wonderland "is NOT a user generated world" (his emphasis) and that "3d objects can be built in outside tools (Maya, etc)." For me, this confirms the my initial impression that Wonderland may not support collaborative, real-time building efforts very well, and that the Second Life build tools are more accessible (both in access and learning curve) to a broader audience. Alan also confirmed that (a) Wonderland is still very early in the development process, using the term "alpha-ish - maybe beta" to describe it; and (b) the ability to customize Wonderland may be beyond the reach of many institutions since, as he noted, "doing anything custom calls for some serious java skills."

Second, Alan's comments help to pinpoint perhaps the primary function and purpose of Wonderland. In describing the benefits of Project Wonderland, Alan said that it "can be more 'controlled' - run behind firewalls" and "connected to authentication services" plus "it is more built on the ability to collaborate" through "application sharing." And, when asked if it was "more like Qwaq" - Alan responded that Wonderland is "IN function like Qwaq" (as opposed to the design or underlying development standards, I guess). Wonderland is particularly well suited to "share any app you run on a desktop . . . co-browse web sites . . . work on shared apps together . . . and there are some interesting potentials for connecting to other net apps." However, "each server is its own world" and Alan was "not sure if there is a central avatar/identity manager." For me, all of that suggests that Wonderland is ideally suited as a virtual meeting space - moreso than it is a build and content delivery space; the application sharing, telephony & voice communication tools and private chat capabilities enabled by a server platform that can be more controlled, run behind firewalls and connected to authentication services all point to a tool intended for supporting business-centered collaboration - even within the higher education industry.

The bigger picture I take from this and several other recent conversations is that virtual worlds appear to be falling into one of two types. Second Life, Active Worlds, and There are content class virtual worlds. The usefulness of content class virtual worlds is the user/resident generated content; SL is designed around the ability to build, share and interact with virtual content. Many of the tools to support business and collaboration have been slower to develop in Second Life: voice communication, in-world web access, etc. In contrast, Qwak/Croquet, Project Wonderland and IBM's proprietary Metaverse are business class virtual worlds. Project Wonderland focuses on the ability to support business needs: application sharing, integration with existing authentication services & business data platforms, voice communication, and business class scalability etc. And, as perhaps expected, it doesn't emphasize the visual experience; Alan noted that "the avatars are, well ugly," and as noted above, it's not as easy to deliver robust content within Wonderland.

The long term question will be whether the current business-class virtual worlds will begin to develop content-class type capabilities or vice versa. Until that happens, I believe educational institutions may realistically engage Project Wonderland AND Second Life but for drastically different reasons and unique purposes. Of course, the issue of which business or content-class virtual world is the "best of class" remains to be answered. Given the NMC/Sun partnership, Wonderland may be the best option in the business class, particularly for educational institutions, and at the moment, Second Life is likely the top option in the content-class for secondary and post-secondary educators and institutions. I do wonder about the extent to which elementary education may or could be using virtual worlds targeted to the under 13 age groups (Webkinz World etc).

As a final note, I'd again like to recommend AJ Kelton's (SL: AJ Brooks) regularly scheduled Sled Roundtable on Tuesday afternoons at 3:30SLT on Montclair State CHSSSouth (slurl). This group is routinely attracting 35+ Sleducators for very active discussions on pertinent topics.