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Thread: new flash player with GPU support

  1. #41
    Senior Member Ray Beez's Avatar
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    @Rumble: The most likely reason very little else has wowed you is because it takes *A LOT* of experienced talent to make anything really polished and well executed in 3D, and most agencies that are doing advergames just don't have the staff or experience (and likely not even the budget) to do 3D "right". Most of that talent is working over in the "real" game industry.

    That said, I don't have high hopes. Adobe couldnt even implement reliable GPU acceleration into Photoshop. (Oh i know it's there, but it only works with very recent graphics cards and even then, I've encountered bugs that forced me to turn it off.)
    Last edited by Ray Beez; 10-26-2010 at 01:12 AM.

  2. #42
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    Just saw this, read and watch the video

    http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2010/fla...s-hardware-3d/

    PS: Not sure if it has been posted already Too lazy to check
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  3. #43
    formerly hooligan2001 :) .hooligan's Avatar
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    Ahh too late dam you squize
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  4. #44
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    It's just nice not having to defend Adobe in this thread anymore, although I'm sure there will be a load of negatives sooner or later.

    Squize.

  5. #45
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    I don´t have any trust in Adobe integrating it in a way that all ide made stuff would get any prpper performance increase, neither that it works with AS1 or 2 or even current non new api using AS3 stuff. Actually Adobe´s statements to me sound like they don´t intend to do anything propper on the IDE integration side, neither on even creating 2D or 3D engine/ framework themselves.
    Still, they get the benefit of the doubt label halfway back from me, they have another big shot at the money pot, so nice for them, they better shouldn´t screw up again

  6. #46
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    Tom, of course I know of the Unity gallery, I've seen a fair few things form there and like I said the only one that is truly impressive AND runs at a high framerate is the Island demo. I was wondering if you just had a specific demo in mind.

  7. #47
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Beez View Post
    @Rumble: The most likely reason very little else has wowed you is because it takes *A LOT* of experienced talent to make anything really polished and well executed in 3D, and most agencies that are doing advergames just don't have the staff or experience (and likely not even the budget) to do 3D "right". Most of that talent is working over in the "real" game industry.

    That said, I don't have high hopes. Adobe couldnt even implement reliable GPU acceleration into Photoshop. (Oh i know it's there, but it only works with very recent graphics cards and even then, I've encountered bugs that forced me to turn it off.)
    Can't disagree with that at all Ray, I basically said EXACTLY the same thing to my colleague this morning.

    Making a 3D game is a hell of a lot of work, it requires experience, talent and hard work/dedication. The programming side and the modelling/level design/texturing side, I know because I'm making a 3D game at the moment.

    And you're right, the vast majority of the proper talented 3D game devs are of course developing for consoles.

    That's why even when this GPU support is released, there won't be a huge amount of competition for 3D games. It's not something you can pick up in 2 weeks, and most of the talented, experienced guys are going to be working on console games.

  8. #48
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    Tom as far as I'm aware none of the usual assets will have any performance benefit, a movieclip will still be drawn using software via the vector renderer.

    I imagine the molehill API will be just that, it's own package, which you'll have to hit up away from the usual displaylist stuff.
    There won't be any performance improvement in any games out there now, aside from whatever minor tweaks they give via the compiler.

    As for as1/2 support, that's never going to happen.

    Squize.

  9. #49
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    Exactly, it's basically a directX call just like from C++ etc from the sounds of it, of course it won't have any effect on any existing work, that would be unrealistic.

    It would have to dynamically deconstruct everything into triangles and feed them to the GPU.

  10. #50
    Funkalicious TOdorus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Squize View Post
    Tom as far as I'm aware none of the usual assets will have any performance benefit, a movieclip will still be drawn using software via the vector renderer.
    I'm far from an expert on any of this, but as far as I know a 3D engine transforms and renders textures. Why not pas a sprite as a polygon to the API and let the GPU handle display? If that would be possible blitting engines wouldn't require that much modification.

    My only concern would be, what that would do to depth. You don't want perspective added to your layers. It's orthogonal or bust.

  11. #51
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    @Squize & rumblesushi: yeah, that´s how i pictured it, too.
    Which yeah, is pretty far away from an ideal implementation, cause it basically restricts the usage for well, frameworks and engines people make themselves, "ideally" using none of the exisiting flash graphics side feature side when that part is still as slow as always.
    Well, that is kinda limiting.
    Again, all speculation based on what they showed and said up to now, let´s see how that turns out at the end.

    TOdorus: yeah, to some degree they could do that, it gets more complicated with things like vector text and vector graphics in general. Most of the classic graphical side tools in the ide can´t be made to run fully handled by the graphics card without some proper dev effort on that end, especially not if one wants to ensure that all looks and works the same (besides big performance gain) compared to how it was like before.

    Also Adobe is not good at that or unwilling to do changes to the ide/classical graphics related feature set. I mean look at how few changes/ additions besides filters there were to the graphics side editable in the IDE since flash 5. There´s not even a way yet to edit bitmapdata stuff graphically in the IDE.
    Some there at Adobe also have the view that codeside only approach is the way to go anyway, AS3 was a great ide and also that its a good way to go to just add some new api and let the designer and developer base figure out the usage and a good workflow with just the new stuff instead of properly integrating it in the ide and with the old languages/ api set.
    Last edited by tomsamson; 10-26-2010 at 06:04 PM.

  12. #52
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    "Why not pas a sprite as a polygon to the API and let the GPU handle display?"

    Yeah mate, it's bound to support billboarding, I was talking about existing content, nothing is going to change there, and the standard things we use now I doubt will change in this version too.
    They've licensed a software renderer, but I guess that's just a software version of DirectX / OpenGL, and won't make any difference at all to the normal vector / bitmap renderers.

    But once it's out we're all get to use GPU powered blitters, which means as many layers of parallax as you like with as many sprites as you could ever need ( Now imagine the development time and cost to do fully utilise such a thing ).
    Ok, we lose Movieclips, but they've been a dead duck since as3 broke them.

    Squize.

  13. #53
    Funkalicious TOdorus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Squize View Post
    Ok, we lose Movieclips, but they've been a dead duck since as3 broke them.
    My sentiments exactly. I understand people would like to have their MovieClips and Textfields sped up, but how much does that relate to games? Game developers switched to blitting engines and have built their own engines. You almost make it sound like a hack of us rowdy game devs tomsamson

    Allright it's applications are specific and limiting. I build websites/clients in Flash for a living and I can see a novelty 3D effect there, without the budget bieng strained too much. I build games in Flash as a hobby and I can see my number of game objects increase dramaticly. I'm in flavor country.

  14. #54
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TOdorus View Post
    My sentiments exactly. I understand people would like to have their MovieClips and Textfields sped up, but how much does that relate to games? Game developers switched to blitting engines and have built their own engines. You almost make it sound like a hack of us rowdy game devs tomsamson
    I built a fare share of games with partial or full bitmapdata based approach. Its useful for some kind of stuff.
    For a lot of other kinds of stuff i see it as huge step backwards though to not have a visual workflow for the graphics side of an application.
    Its not like Adobe introduced new functioanlity and made it work well with the old functionality or made good replacements for the old functionality, basically they added new functionality and made the old work even worse and more limited than before.
    So yeah, when seeing it as downside for many kinds of things to not be able to edit graphical things in a visual workflow ide, well, you get why i dislike Adobe´s approach in more recent years.

    Then there are also sides like usually bitmapdata data based approaches being massive memory eaters (cause one is dealing with uncompressed image data there), hence they are far from ideal to run on anything else than machines with lots of memory. So you basically get to choose if you want the "old way" of more graphical approach, then you get way higher cpu usage usually or the "newer way" which in return often leads to massively higher memory requirements.

    Then there are also other sides like for some years i´m way more exploratory, i try various technologies, languages, platforms etc and then use those i see as nice and fitting for a particular use case/ project/ idea for that thing then.

    I don´t see any sense anymore in going extra lengths to get something running halfway nicely in flash which when done with other options would run way nicer on the same box and with more recent flash additions/changes also for example allow editing graphical content in visual workflow when done with other options, unlike with flash.
    Either something runs nicely in flash in a workflow i see as appropriate for creating that kind of content or i create that kind of content using a more fitting technology.

    For a while i also used to make editors etc for flash stuff. Man, i worked on a lot of editor apps. But you know what? I´m fed up with that =) I still make editors in between but for other stuff in other technologies. Why should i continue making stuff for editors in flash for getting functionality going which the platform/ tool provider should offer out of the box?

    I´m not even sure for what Adobe expects to earn a lot of money with the flash ide in the future if they don´t integrate most of the api/ player additions/changes propperly in the ide for all language versions and visual workflow.


    Maybe they want to sit there, wait and see what the community cooks up with the new api regarding frameworks, engines, editors etc and then buy out the solution they see as fitting, but yeah, to me that is not the way to go i expect from a middleware and runtime provider.

    On a sidenote: regarding that last point: Adobe has that weird way to handle the community: they pick one or a bunch of guys as their showcase loved guys for a while, those get way earlier access to the in dev stuff than even all the "private" and public beta testers, get handed and pimped around on conferences, get all the apps and other things for free etc. and then, well, if they don´t act like Adobe would like them to for a while, they are suddenly mostly forgotten and ignored by Adobe.
    I wonder how all the other 3d engine/framework etc creators in the flash space feel when looking at how alternativa got so much earlier access to this stuff.
    Yeah, way to motivate your community to do your work for you Adobe, haha, yesterday loved and praised one, today orphaned child.
    Poor papervision etc guys and various others getting all too hooked into coming close with Adobe.
    Last edited by tomsamson; 10-26-2010 at 08:17 PM.

  15. #55
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    "There´s not even a way yet to edit bitmapdata stuff graphically in the IDE."

    "when seeing it as downside for many kinds of things to not be able to edit graphical things in a visual workflow ide"

    Sorry, I don't understand these points. Do you want Flash to come with some sort of bitmap editor built in ? Or do you mean being able to scale / rotate etc. a bitmap and then that amended version is available directly as a bitmap rather than having to put it in a sprite.

    Just caught my eye 'cause you mentioned it twice now, just wondering what you're thinking.

    Squize.

  16. #56
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    Well, i´ve been thinking about that for a while (before i came to the conclusion that Adobe won´t do it anytime soon so i should rather use other things than flash for that kinda stuff).

    Bitmapdata related functionality, Pixelbender, Achemy or now the new api additions and some other things.
    They all have lots of potential for many use cases but regarding using them for graphics side things they are basically lower level coder stuff.
    Most classically trained graphic artists will have very few to no use for them since they can´t use them in visual workflow. Usually they download and try to use some things made by coders but that´s about it.
    And yeah, it sorta makes no sense when a graphic artist can´t use, edit and manipulate a lot of functionality relating to creating or manipulating the visuals.

    So regarding bitmapdata i could think of many ways to integrate it propperly for visual workflow in the IDE. Which are more fitting depends on how general usage or more specific use case focussed one wants to go.

    Just an example:
    -Have a bitmap(data) canvas/ layer/ (new kind of) "movieclip" where one can place raster graphics from the library, animate them in frames, tweens etc and behind the scenes it does all the setup like with a codeside made bitmapdata based approach.
    (Which one can also manipulate on codeside again if one wants to).
    This could also be used for let´s say doing particle effects, stamp tools, getting generally better performing objects than movieclips but with movieclip editing and control functionality etc.

    If they want to go more focussed with game dev they could of course integrate a whole blitting based engine and a bitmapdata level editor panel, also do things like something like movieclips but one basically provides a spritesheet, sets cell size, colum/rowcount and it distributes it to frames.

    Sure once one goes that far one could also add visual editors for doing pixel bender effects, be able to add those in visual workflow to the existing filters tab etc etc.

    And yeah, a logical conclusion would be that at some point they would add pen,eraser etc painting tool like tools for editing the bitmap objects. Not to the extend photoshop etc allows editing raster images, but yeah, usable for common use cases, just like the vector graphics editing tools in flash are no comparison to full fledged vector graphics editing apps but quite useable for many common use cases.

    Possibilities are really endless, they could range from the usual stuff us flash devs cooked up ourselves for our custom editors, demos, engines etc over the years to way more in depth things.

    But yeah, you have to start somewhere, and with Adobe i haven´t seen that at all, as i said, up to now and looks like even more so with the upcoming release they seem to not put any focus on integrating all what´s possible with newer additions propperly with existing apis and languages and in the ide, ideally also with visual workflow support.
    Last edited by tomsamson; 10-26-2010 at 09:40 PM.

  17. #57
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    Also: with that previous post i think i once again made clear to some:
    -why Adobe has made a big mistake in throwing me out of their beta and not listening to me and so they should instantly beg for me coming back

    and to others:

    -why Adobe totally did the right thing with throwing me out, just like they were probably also right with most of their other decisions in the past few years i moan about often.

    I have no interest in further trying to convince either group to come to a different conclusion, so i´m out here until either Adobe lets me in on their next beta cycle or the next flash version comes out in release form so i can evaluate it outside of hype video/ blog post/twitter message context.

    Bye dudes, i´m off exploring nice things

  18. #58
    M.D. mr_malee's Avatar
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    relax dude. No platform is perfect and features cost time and money.

    There's nothing stopping you extending Flash with a new panel to do bitmap editing or anything else you want.

    And I'm yet to see a program that can edit a shader by twisting knobs and pressing buttons, I think if an artist is trying to make pretty shaders they need to bite the bullet and learn some programming.
    Last edited by mr_malee; 10-26-2010 at 10:16 PM.
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  19. #59
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    I respect the Alternativa guys, they are clever guys and have obviously worked hard on their engine. I do find it a bit unfair though that they have SUCH a head start on this new technology.

    A lone wolf dev like me is going to have to work extra hard to get up to speed with this technology when the public beta is released, when a team like Alt3D is already comfortable with it.

    Not that it's their fault of course (Alt3D), but it does seem unfair. Personally I think the beta testing and demos should all be done in house, so that the 3D devs are all on equal footing when the API is publicly available.

  20. #60
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    rumblesushi I see your point of view, but it does make sense for Adobe to do that, even if on the surface it doesn't seem fair.

    I was on the CS5/iPhone pre-release, and I had a game live on the store before CS5 was even launched, which is hardly fair to everyone else. But, I spent 3 weeks doing that, which is a fair bit of time / money ( When you consider my last adver-game release took 7 days, and that's not counting having to register as an Apple dev and buy an iPod touch ) not to mention dealing with constant updates altering things, untold crashes, the learning curve etc.

    When Adobe does something in-house we get components, I'd much rather a dedicated focused development team were making something like this.

    Yes they've got a large advantage over other devs, and quite possibly they're going to charge for v8 and make their money back, but they have taken a certain amount of risk upfront.

    Squize.

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