Last week at the Adobe MAX event they announced “Project Molehill”, a collection of 3D Acceleration APIs that take advantage of GPUs for high-speed and high-quality rendering.
Today, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, renders thousands of non z-buffered triangles at approximately 30 Hz. With the new 3D APIs, developers can expect hundreds of thousands of z-buffered triangles to be rendered at HD resolution in full screen at around 60 Hz. Using the new 3D APIs in Flash Player and AIR will make it possible to deliver sophisticated 3D experiences across almost every computer and device connected to the Internet.
While this will open up a new world of flash-based Gaming to the masses, it compete directly against existing WebGL functionality, which Adobe addresses as such:
In terms of design, our approach is very similar to the WebGL design. However, we offer a consistent, browser-agnostic solution that will enable advanced 3D experiences on almost every computer and device connected to the Internet. Additionally, GPU-accelerated 3D in Flash Player will build on all the expressiveness features that exist today in Adobe Flash Player.
They will also be integrated into Adobe’s desktop solution Adobe AIR, possibly opening the route to cross-platform gaming via Adobe AIR (something many companies have tried and failed to pull off). At the event, they demonstrated a racing game built with an updated version of Alternativa Platform.
While they surely don’t hit the performance of native solutions, massive improvements in processor and GPU speeds may not make that necessary. Who knows, maybe Doom 4 will run in Adobe AIR?
One thing’s for sure, it won’t be on the iPhone.
via Adobe Labs – 3D APIs for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
