NxtGen Media - The Freeman View

Flash3D - Coming Soon - Sigh…

After reading that Flash will now be moving into the realm of 3D, my response was a heavy sigh, and then a, “Really? Ya Think?”

Considering that this has been the wish of many a Flash developer, plus hardware acceleration, I can’t help but think that this move is a bit late to the party. I love Flash and still use it, but I have been pissed at Adobe for a while with its less than satisfying Flash releases. They could have owned this space a long time ago.  It is one of the many reasons I have embraced Unity3D.

Now I am hearing that this move is the one that will herald the Flash player that will kill Unity. I for one simply can’t see it, at least not yet. First of all, the next version of Unity is coming next month with an array of features that will be hard to match. Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn’t this the first time that Flash 3D is really being taken seriously by Adobe? Unless Adobe has  a super top secret engine in development for the last four years, I can’t see how they will come close to the IDE and performance of Unity. There is a whole lot of catch up to do.

I would love to leverage my AS3 knowledge in a Flash 2D/3D environment, with a player that is hardware accelerated, can do applications as well as games, and work on a multitude of devices, including the iDevices, but now I have Unity. GUI dev is not all that wonderful in Unity, but it certainly is no show stopper. It will not be hard for the Unity to create better GUI creation tools, and thus move into the realm of RIA. It will be a hard and long time for Adobe to produce a 3D engine from scratch and dev environment as slick and powerful as Unity.

We don’t know if Flash will become a 3D interface like Unity, or will it provide the base functions so that you can build your own engine as Ben Garney has suggested in the past, but either way it’s going to be a lot of work.

Adobe: Flash to take 3D graphics plunge

Flash and 3D, here we go again

-DCF

Change and Choice

The past few months have been a roller coaster ride for Flash devs. The events have felt like an action movie complete with cliff hangers and crazy plot twist. Adobe has this new campaign regarding “Freedom of Choice“. I think it is a great move on their part, but I can’t help but think that this whole Apple thing has been a warning shot over their bow. The writing is now on the wall, the coffee is burning, and it is obvious that ‘someone is trying to eat Adobe’s lunch’.

Adobe has had many warnings in the past from its devs out in the field to fix and upgrade various aspects of the player. Improvements have been made, but there was no pressing need to move faster, because there really was no competition. Truthfully, HTML5 is not quite ready for prime time and there is time for Adobe to step it up and make Flash really solid, but that time grows short. Steve Jobs may have inadvertently done something that Flash devs could not do, and that is turn up the innovative fire in Adobe’s boiler room.

If all goes well, I am hoping that Flash will become the general choice for the game console, the video player, the RIA platform, the anything media console for any device, web or stand alone. Flash being the closest to the ‘write once, run anywhere’ pipe dream, and with the most penetration, it just seemed logical that it would eventually happen. This whole Apple stir is business. It’s about who’s going to be the player of choice and ultimately the gate keeper. If Flash did not have this kind of potential, this drama would not be happening.

Can’t we all just get along?

Can’t we all just get along? Nope. Too much money to be made. If Flash became the tool it was supposed to be, then it would be the gate keeper for all media which kind of kills the App Store. Flash everywhere, on every platform was and still is the ultimate goal. That potential still exist, and if nothing else Steve may have started a war he is going to live to regret. I don’t 100% agree with Steve Jobs, but I understand his position. It’s business.

Adobe makes money on tools, not the Flash player, so beefing it up and opening it up and making the tools ‘better, stronger, faster’ could be a great thing for them and be the move that tips the scale in this cold war. Hope Adobe gets the point. A superior player, with lower barrier of entry for development, and quality tools will lead to more apps (good and bad). A plethora of killer Apps not available on the iEcosystem could be a tipping factor in time. On the other hand, if Adobe does not step it up, then Steve was right and Flash may go quietly into the night cuz they failed to keep up. With the fire now lit, I am seriously doubting it.

Steve Jobs/Apple: Thoughts on Flash

Adobe CEO’s Response to Steve Jobs

Both Apple & Adobe are extremely full of shit and I’ll tell you why…

Scaleform 3D Interface using Flash

Would love to get this going in Unity.

Choosing Sides

I am more than a little concerned about this 3.3.1 clause that Apple has added to its Developer Program License Agreement. I have been a Flash developer since version 5.0 and recently started getting into Unity3D since the October indie release. I am a PC guy that has been using Windows and Linux. The last three years has been spent doing Flash and some .Net development. My organization was really excited about the iPad and the prospect of building applications for it using Unity and Flash. It just made sense to leverage what we were already using. We ordered an iPad and most of the doctors on staff are iPhone owners. The excitement was in the air that we were about to start developing apps for a device that could become as popular as the Palm had become for the medical community. Then our hopes were dashed with the 3.3.1 clause.

Will we switch to a total Apple development solution? I don’t think so. In fact, the day the announcement was made, was the day that we started considering other options for phones and tablets. If Unity continues to be allowed on Apple products, then we will most likely stick with our iPad development without Flash. If Unity is not allowed, then we will still use Unity and Flash but we will move to another platform altogether. I think that is a bloody shame because the ‘iPlatform’ has such promise.

The 3.3.1 clause is not set in stone yet, but in the obvious blood lust to kill Flash, I can’t see how it could be rescinded unless some really major negotiations occur. Personally, I think that if it has gone this far, then it is close to impossible to bring it back to something amiable. This is like being in the middle of a really ugly divorce and waiting to see who you are going to live with.

Has Steve Jobs gone mad?

DCF

Flash Hardware Acceleration…Coming

When I used to see articles like this, “Hardware-accelerated Flash almost here“, I would have gotten excited and begun dreaming of all the cool things that I would be able to do with Flash. Now I just shake my head, and wonder why it took so long to address this. The ‘Almost’ in the title of that article, is indicative of what has been going on for years with Flash. Too little, too late.

It’s not like there was no writing on the wall. Folks have been saying (begging) for years what was needed to make Flash a truly unstoppable force on the web. Hardware acceleration has definitely been high on the wish list. The potential for Flash to become the ‘gaming console of the web‘ has been mentioned in the past, but it’s like the point was missed as to the importance of games. If the player performed really well with 2d and 3d games (the most demanding of all apps), then RIAs would benefit as well. Meanwhile, many Flashers are looking at Unity for their game development needs.

I am just glad that a fire has been lit under the proverbial arse of Adobe to beef the player up. If nothing else, Apple has sure stoked that fire. Flash still has a chance to secure its position as it is still early in the game, but that window is closing fast. Almost is still not good enough.

DCF

Flash on any Screen

Here is an Adobe Flash promo video that sums up the immediate and assumed future penetration of Flash. Love the idea and concept, and vision. I really hope they can pull it off, but there are many who want to see Flash die and are truly gunning to make it so. Interesting times.

-DCF

Unity Showing Up in More Places

I am starting to see Unity in more places. A buddy of mine sent me a link to The Clash of the Titans site. The site loads with Flash as I would expect from a movie site, but when I get to the game, it loads up Unity. I had to smile.

My kid was eating cereal this morning, and on the back of a General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios box was a link to their brand extending game, Honey Defender. The site itself was in Flash, but the game was in Unity. The game took a long time to load, (much like the early days of Flash) but once loaded, I was treated to a decent 3D adventure based on a Honey Nut Cheerios world. Silly, I know, but before this would have been done completely in Flash.

Axe Body Spray also had a Unity game site as I recall. I think this is just the beginning of brands moving into 3D. Sure the two techs can coexist, but I can’t help but think that somebody missed the boat here and it sure wasn’t Unity. I can’t see it being that much longer until those parts done in Flash, can be done in Unity. Sure, ads are what make folks complain about Flash, but it is funny to see Unity moving into that territory. Very interesting days ahead.

-D

iPad Thoughts

I have been following the iPad press with keen interest. I think that it was a phenomenal move to encapsulate the most common user apps into a single sexy no nonsense device. This is a device that I could get my Mom, and for the most part would cover everything that she would want to do with a computer. I would only have to do minimal tech support for it if at all. The price is right, and I could see this thing becoming commonplace in schools, hospitals, boardrooms, and all types of jobs. I don’t own a Mac, but I am seriously considering getting an iPad after it goes through an iteration or two. That is very telling in itself. I have an iPod, no iPhone, am a diehard PC guy and yet I am considering this device. Very telling indeed.

The make or break for this thing I feel will be the apps. With the right apps it can go anywhere. Well maybe not anywhere, but an industrial strength version would remedy that. What is really interesting to me is that this very chic multimedia device does not run Flash in the browser. I don’t know why Apple chose not to allow this, but I can say that it is obviously a move that makes a clear statement to Adobe. I could be very wrong on this, but I can’t see that this was an oversight. I interpret it as ‘Screw you and your software. We don’t want your stinking software on our device’. Or maybe, ‘we don’t want browser based Flash apps bypassing the App Store’.

If this device does become hugely popular as the iPhone did, and still does not run Flash apps well, that definitely will be a hit to Flash. With all the Flash content out there and the move towards more robust Flash RIAs, (which seems to me would be great on the iPad if performance could be addressed) it would seem that the more apps available browser or store, the more people would use it. I am not sure how this obviously political move will roll in the long run for either company. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I continue to play with Unity3D and hope that it will work on the iPad as well.

Flash Platform Gaming Technology Center

Adobe announces a site that will be dedicated to game development. With all the growth and change in the browser based gaming space over the past year, I am not surprised. Farmville consumes so many of my friends time it’s not even funny.

Adobe has made some good moves this year, and is in a very good position in terms of browser penetration. Flash has become a big part of the user web experience and has a good chance of becoming the platform of choice for interactive media on the web. Still, as I maintain my Flash skills, I also look to Unity3D simply because of the superior firepower.

Flash is a great all around development platform that keeps getting better, but the Flash player still needs a boost in performance for the gaming side. If Flash gets to the performance level of the Unity engine, Adobe wins big. It does appear that Adobe will eventually get the Flash player to the level of performance of Unity, but just how long that will be is the question. My guess is that with everything heating up the way it is in online gaming, it should be fairly soon.

Adobe Flash Platform Gaming Technology Center