“Flash will innovate or die,” I wrote earlier this year. “I’m betting on innovation,” and that’s paying off.
Flash Player is used to deliver something like 70% of all online games, and its 3D chops about to grow much more powerful. At MAX the team announced “Molehill,” a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that work across screens (desktops, phones, TVs, etc.). Here’s a sample demo:
Flash Player PM Thibault Imbert shares more info & demos here:
And for a deeper dive, check out this presentation from engineering manager Kevin Goldsmith.
I’ve seen the demo right after MAX and I gotta say it’s impressive. If it can deliver on mobile as well, it’s even better.
I’ve been working with flash since v2 in 1997 and I like the way I can use the same code on almost ay platform. For example, I created a chess game (http://www.sparkchess.com). It’s available online in any browser with flash (that’s 98% of all browsers/platforms), as well as native Windows/Mac app, on iPad and on Android — all with the same code, no need to rewrite.
The Adobe TV videos still cause Firefox to beachball the second they are clicked, requiring a force-quit.
Firefox 3.0.19 on MacOS 10.4.11
I have never seen any of the videos hosted on Adobe TV.
Hmm. Works on FF 3.6.3 on 10.5.8. Have you tried updating FF or using a different browser?
It happens with Safari 3.1.2 as well. Other people with other browser versions have reported the same thing in some of the other blog entries, so it’s not just me.
Here’s a handful of other Molehill videos in case you havent seen them: http://savagelook.com/blog/away3d/adobe-molehill-3d-api-videos