Today Adobe sent a pre-release version of Flash 10, codenamed "Astro," out into the public. With the host of youth worlds out there running in 2 or 2.5D, it's obvious that accessibility is a big boost in nabbing a share of the market. Still, many users would likely prefer a 3D environment. It looks like Flash 10 may be the ideal solution. Supporting native 3D transformation and animation, Adobe already has some developers excited about the potential.
"The 3D effects and transformations now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta enable developers to get started quickly with 3D," Ralph Hauwert, owner of UnitZeroOne and a Core Developer of Papervision 3D, said in a statement. "For interactive designers and developers well-versed in creating 3D experiences, the revamped drawing API and Pixel Bender language will enable an entirely new depth of graphics unseen on the Web today. Interactive designers and developers will be able to create movie-like experiences, with special effects that before weren't possible on the Web."
I know of plenty of other developers who are tooling around with Astro as well, exploring the capabilities for creating a browser-based world with the 3D immersion capabilities that Flash previously couldn't provide.
There are certainly other options--Vivaty, for example, runs off a plug-in to provide rich 3D experiences--and some developers were able to wring 3D effects out of Flash 9, but it's hard not to get excited about the possibilities that Flash's pervasiveness and new, easier 3D tools could bring.
If you've tried it out and are considering developing in Flash 10, let me know. I'd love to hear about your experience. If you haven't tried it out, you can download the pre-release version for free.
The 3D effects in Flash 10 are designed to create 3d "effects" for 2D data. There is no native support or intended support for 3D mesh data. For that you need to look to Papervision3D. The good news here is the enhanced GPU support and hardware acceleration. On its own, Flash 10 is not the magic bullet for browser based 3D worlds. It's more marketing than muscle.
Posted by: Dex | May 15, 2008 at 07:21 PM