Looking for 3D collaboration tools

[Bas Reus]

Hi all, my name is Bas Reus, I'm blogging for the Dutch P2P blog, and occasionally for the main English blog.

I'm looking for a 3D collaboration tool. Right now I am experimenting with Sun's Project Wonderland. It is a 3D environment where people can have conversations, can collaborate on shared (X-app based) programs.

My first impression of the project is very good. It is based on 2nd Life and is open source. Designers and developers can create their own virtual places and objects. The problem is that I am not familiar with 3D environments and developing in Java.

My goal is to simulate a real situation in this virtual environment. Does anyone have experience with this subject? Advice is appreciated.

[SamRose]

I have a friend working on http://interreality.org/ which is usable now, and is packed with potential. You can upload objects you make from Blender.


Also, of course there is http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page

Thanks for making me aware of Sun prject wonderland

Can you go into detail about what you are thinking about doing? I am exploring 3D technologies for education, and for collaboration/collaborative design.

[Bas Reus]

Thans Sam.

The purpose of using a 3D environment is to simulate a familiar environment for a group of consumers. In this environment it would be possible for the consumers to act as they would act in a real situation. The 3D environment plays a crucial role here. The idea is that you have a certain role in a group, based on the group and environment. For example, you play a different role in your sports team than you play with friends in a bar, at your work or at home. The virtual collaboration space should be designed in such a way that consumers will act as they would do in a real situation.

Project Wonderland seems to be able to support this, but is lacking some usability. The roadmap looks promising. In future releases they will offer a hosted webbased version, where you can share your Windows applications in the 3D environment.

Do you think that the links you provided can help me any further or are more mature than Project Wonderland?

[SamRose]

Probably the quickest easiest ways for you to solve your problem would be Second Life, or project wonderland (although I have never used project wonderland. So you would know better than I if it is very easy to build realistic models within it). If you have programming knowledge, the links I provided are mature enough to do what you need, but require some knowledge of respective programming language, UNIX, and more