In today’s guest blog post, French entrepreneur Michel Denis shares some information about his current project with information and communication technology provider, Pôle Numérique.
By Michel DENIS
Internet 3 Solutions
http://mondesvirtuels3dcollaboratifs.blogspot.com/

In front of the landing place, is the Welcome Hall, from which a number of doors (portals) let people go directly to their destination room
During the last 6 months we (Internet 3 Solutions) have been delivering an Open Wonderland virtual world project with “Pôle Numérique de la Drôme,” the public actor in France responsible for promoting advanced IT to its 100,000 inhabitants, mostly in rural territories, with a focus on: enterprises, collectivities and people. You can learn more about the company here: Pôle Numérique (French site); Pôle Numérique (English site).
After a number of phases (experiment, pilot, and production), the virtual world is now fully in place and functional. It is currently in use by a number of actors from the territory. Soon it will host distant activities from the key actors of “Drôme”, such as: the Pôle Numérique itself, public internet offices’ coordinators, Chamber of Commerce (CCI), Chamber of Artisants (CMA), the Main City’s governance (Valence Agglo, aka Valence Major), Kasciopé (Scientific Expo/Museum), the territory’s overall governance (Conseil Général).
Types of virtual world activities include remote:
- internal meetings
- training sessions
- expos and museum exhibits
- online collaboration
- and more
The virtual space is structured with a main campus at the starting location and a set of sub-worlds with portals between the places.

When landing, visitors can browse through orientation slideshows, using the PDF Viewer, to get used to Open Wonderland
The 3D modeling tool use for the project is Google SketchUp, with the re-use of some Google 3D Warehouse objects modified significantly to adapt them to the purpose of the project as well as to the real-time requirements of 3D rendering in Open Wonderland.
-michel