Flash Heads into a New Frontier: 3D
Adobe will demonstrate a future version of the Flash Player capable of rendering 3D images.
Adobe product manager Imbert Thibault said in a recent blog that the company plans to demo a version of its Flash Player capable of rendering 3D. Dubbing the session as "Flash Player 3D Future," the live demonstration will take place at Adobe's MAX 2010 conference in Los Angeles this October, and promises to take a "deep dive into the next-generation 3D API."
The blog doesn't go into any specific detail about Flash's future 3D capabilities, setting aside notions of true textured z-buffered triangles and GPU acceleration. Instead, Thibault simply said that users will have to forget what they've seen before, and that the new player is going to be BIG.
"I tell you, some serious stuff is coming for 3D developers," he said. "If you are into 3D development for games, augmented reality, or just interactive stuff like Web sites, you just can't miss the session."
Talk about hype.
The blog also said that attendees will finally get to learn about the inner details of the Flash Player renderer. "Lee Thomason (Flash Player architect) will delve into the details of the Flash Player renderer, and show how to optimize the rendering performance of your applications," he said. "Lee will cover mechanisms like the display list, text rendering, shaders, GPU hardware acceleration, and exclusive features coming in a future version of Flash Player."
Will 3D be a good thing for Flash? The platform is already laggy as it is for many users even after the latest update. But with Steve Jobs dismissing Flash and the Internet moving towards HTML5 solutions, adding 3D to Flash seems like a likely course for an aging platform.
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Does it have
"Do you want to install Yahoo! search bar?"
(or "Ask.com" tool bar)
when installing?
Maybe they think a bunch of Farmville players would rather play in first-person perspective.
It won't be overnight switch to HTML5, there will be use for it.
Adobe needs to address the following first before adding new stuffs, like 3D.
1) finish 64-bit version
2) stability & security issues
3) not using its download manager or provide easy way to download th whole package
4) not select any addon toolbar/searchbar by default
Not that a flash player compares to this but I recently updated my rig with Nvidia 3D vision device and playing the freebie game Avatar it is really something else. I had originally dismissed Avatar since most made for movie games truly suk but I am really digging this one in full 3D immersion Also Augmented Reality is an extremely useful tool. I would love to get into that but the current tools available are a huge pain as they involve having to compile your own programs meaning a huge skill set from just creating content alone. Maybe this will kick start that in the right direction.
I bet Steve got upset about the news.
As long as it doesn't just swallow resources like Flash does, this is great news. Some stability would be nice as well
I guess those will never run on netbooks.
If you want 3D Flash - check out the open source project Sandy 3D - which allows for 3D rendering of scene graphs in any version of Flash from 8 to CS5. Even works on mobile devices... unless it's apple....
why the heck do i get an HP pop up everytime i switch pages at Toms Hardware. Its annoying as hell Tom.
I'm so tired of this 3-D craze.
Flash death throws. Roll on HTML5.
I'm so tired of this 3-D craze.
This isn't 3D vision, this is 3D rendering.
I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for Shockwave and Director. The hardware 3D capabilities were the only thing keeping it going, now Flash can do it too.
Shame, but then I've not used Director in a long time.
You can't call Flash laggy and then talk about everything moving towards HTML5. Have you seen performance differences with vector, 2d, and 3d when it comes to SVG/Canvas vs Flash? Flash DESTROYS HTML5 when it comes to that sort of thing. 5FPS vs 200FPS. Its like running a video game without a 3d card with HTML5 right now.
I wish Flash would focus on 3D z-depth tools (where you can place your objects on different planes within a virtual 3D space) rather than on 3D rendering.
Currently with flash you can create "depth" by choosing which layer is over the other. With a tool like Toon Boom animate, you can place objects at different depths without worrying about where the layer is. This permits you to weave your camera through a 3D virtual space rather than having to manually adjust the speed at which different objects move.
I think 3D tools like that might add a bit of a kick to flash gaming that would keep users playing. As to video streaming, didn't Google do a pretty good job explaining why HTML 5 isn't ready to replace flash for them yet?
OMG. 3D porn advertisements installing viruses on my computer now...
You can't call Flash laggy and then talk about everything moving towards HTML5. Have you seen performance differences with vector, 2d, and 3d when it comes to SVG/Canvas vs Flash? Flash DESTROYS HTML5 when it comes to that sort of thing. 5FPS vs 200FPS. Its like running a video game without a 3d card with HTML5 right now.
Try HTML5 in the IE9 platform preview. WAY faster with the GPU acceleration it has.
Regardless of the rest of the news, it's about time they started getting serious on showing devs how to optimize Flash.
How about they head in another frontier first : stability ?
The options for Hi-Def Web development right now are limited to Flash, Silverlight and perhaps Java FX. HTML 5 is no where near where it needs to be to play in this league. And once it has caught up these others will have moved far beyond that point.
It's nice to see Adobe thinking of where that horizon will be in 5 years and implementing the technology to get there right now.
However It would be nice if they did it in 64 Bits.
To those complaining about stability, that is primarily the fault of the developer, not the platform or the language.