Sun Microsystems and Kasetsart University drive Virtual World Innovation in Thailand with 'Project Wonderland' Technology

Sun Microsystems (Thailand) and Kasetsart University launch the 'Wonderland Challenge 2009' - a competition encouraging students to innovate and develop rich multimedia 3D virtual worlds using Project Wonderland, a 100% Java toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds.  Project Wonderland is an open source project currently supported by Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Sun's research and development group.

The objective of the 'Wonderland Challenge 2009' is to initiate the Education 3.0 movement and raise greater public awareness of the potential  impact of emerging Virtual World Technologies in Thailand. This nationwide challenge is open to students who will be pitting their skills against their peers to create an innovative 3D virtual learning environment with 'Project Wonderland', a powerful open source solution that enables developers to build a collaborative virtual world easily.  

"The 'Wonderland Challenge 2009' project is part of Sun's broad and ongoing commitment to collaborate with education institutions globally and in the region. We believe that students represent tomorrow's source of innovation and talent," said Rampa Manoonsin, managing director, Thailand, Sun Microsystems. "By fostering a robust community of developers and providing the platform for them to share knowledge and exchange pointers, we hope to promote the adoption of open source software and its value to technology and to the economy."

"The Project Wonderland team is very excited about this announcement," said Nicole Yankelovich, the Project Wonderland lead in Sun Labs.  "The Wonderland Challenge will give students an opportunity to be trained on the Wonderland platform, as well as to build their own 3D collaboration spaces and applications. This is just the kind of collaboration we want to encourage."

The participating teams will create their own virtual worlds with the Project Wonderland technology, under the guidance of the technical team from the High Performance Computing and Networking Center (HPCNC) and the Department of Computer Engineering of Kasetsart University.

In a training workshop organized by Sun and Kasetsart University, students will be introduced to the basics of creating 3D applications using Java programming and the features of the Wonderland open source toolkit. Following that, each team will have a few weeks to construct their own unique virtual world. These virtual worlds will be installed on competition servers so that the students and judges can "walk and experience" these interactive worlds. The finalists will be judged on the creativity, originality, and utility of their virtual worlds which will be presented to the public at the finals. The winning team will be awarded Bt30,000. The first and second runner ups teams will receive Bt15,000 and Bt10,000. In addition, the winner team will be awarded iPod Touch 16 GB for each team member from Sun Microsystems.

The collaboration between HPCNC, the Department of Computer Engineering and Faculty of Engineering of Kasetsart University and Sun Microsystems (Thailand) is the first step in driving the adoption and awareness of 'Project Wonderland' in Thailand.

In the future, Kasetsart University will collaborate with Sun Microsystems on the technical development of 'Project Wonderland' and in the training, consulting and technical support for deployment.  The IT industry in Thailand will benefit from these best practices to develop cost-effective solutions in the deployment of virtual world technology.