Jul 12 2010

Adobe Flash: ready to launch 3D API

CATEGORY: Flash / Social game | GAME: - all By Karar

Adobe Flash once very hot has started to age now. Their current strong avantage si huge user base that have been using it for quite a long time. Else there are good alternates avaialble to shift away from flash. For games Unity 3D engine provides game making ability much better than Flash with full desktop games like features, small plugin footprint, 3D graphics and incredible performance from inside the browser. While their popular FLV video streaming format has a big upcoming rival inform of HTML5 / WebM. Plus with recent heat they were getting from mobile adoption.. it was time to put its development in high gear to force users to stick to it.

Adobe has a Flash development conference coming up with future of flash to be discussed, and one of the features that will be revelead in that conference will be Native 3D support in Flash. 3D Api will allow game makers to take their games easily into the 3D realm, plus allow easier 3D effects for flash intro / animators. We will not know the true capabilites and ease of the 3D system till they publicaly reveal this feature later this winter. But whenever it launches.. it is gonna face once again with some serious competition this time round due to upcoming WebGL format which is based on OpenGL, and will allow even big games like Source engine, quake engine and all 3D linux gamers to easily port their games to web based formats, if they want.

More info about Flash 3D initiative @ CNet

For now those developers who want to do 3D in Flash, they do have user made 3D APIs for ActionScript (Flash programming language) which they can use for partial 3D support in their games. One of them is Sandy 3D engine compatible with Actionscript 2 and 3. So, if you cannt wait for official support of 3D use this instead.