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Thread: New Flash Version is coming (yeah, really soon now :D )

  1. #61
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    to Lapo (btw, hey there mate, long time no hear, hope you´re doing fine ) :
    I see you´re kinda disappointed and yup, i agree on most of your points.

    I didn´t moan a lot about the CS3 release, overall its very welcome that the whole Adobe products work way better together and also the new features for flash do seem nice.
    Of course the nicest beeing AS3 and the way improved player but yup,many already made use of that in other ways, still a great improvement there.
    Personally i also didn´t bother much to check whether the code editor has been improved some, since they didn´t hype that part a lot i expected few improvements and anything other than a major overhaul of it is pointless imho
    I didn´t worry a lot cause i already gave up on the internal code editor ages back,switched over to tools like scite and then to fdt for eclipse and then with as3 i got flex.
    Still i understand that those (many) who are still coding stuff in flash IDE are begging for a propper code editor update and i think Adobe would do good in finally adding that with flash 10. (Heck,if flash IDE gets code editor features like fdt i´d like to code more stuff in it,too of course )

    Also i totally agree on your crits regarding the euro pricing,what is it that makes some companies believe europeans must be so much richer than US people that they just don´t care about ridiculously way higher pricing?
    Some argue with higher taxes, transport and other costs but come on, that doesn´t make up for such inflated prices.
    One of the things that really has to change.
    And yup, indeed i´m one of those thinking about how to get the US box over to me. This one is really not funny.

    But to end with more kind words on the release, overall i see this as nice transitional step/ merger release for all adobe products, its not a bad thing at all (way nicer than i expected things to become when hearing macromedia got bought in first place, mind you) but yeah, i expect way, way more in the next release to have kind words on that one then.

    Quote Originally Posted by mr_malee
    I'm with Tom, i would love for accelerated graphics. I know close to nothing about GPU's but i thought that you could pass off geometry calculations to it so as to take strain off the CPU, which seems like part of the problem now (with 3D)
    sure geometry/physics calculations handled with hardware acceleration would be cool,too but right now with f9 player the code execution already got so much speeded up that it way outpaces display performance. One can have tons of 3d calculations,physics code etc running smoothly,just once one tries to plot that all to screen,move lots of stuff around and apply effects the display renderer can´t keep up.

    Quote Originally Posted by mr_malee
    is it not possible to switch between hardware and software without pause?
    to my understanting: no.
    I think there has to be a short pause where things are switched over so one would probably be best off doing it at app init or by the user toggling a button to do it so he knows what´s up.
    (Different topic, but i think the implementation is nice: The latest flash player supports fullscreen playback switching as some might know and once one switches that on, there´s a short standard message poopping up telling the user what´s happening and how to stop it if not wanting it, think that´s one good way to do it if its about letting the user turn it on/off at runtime)

    Quote Originally Posted by mr_malee
    is it not possible to use a combination of both? like i mentioned above: 2D renderer, Hardware used for geometry and 3D calculations.
    I think the rendering side would benefit more from hardware support as i said above (cause its the more lacking side right now with cpu handling) though yeah, i guess they could split up the work in some way between cpu and gpu,but yup,the flash player team could probably give a better comment on that.
    (btw glad your memory issue is solved )

    Quote Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX
    Speaking as a Mac user who does supposedly have a hardware-accelerated Flash Player, I've got to say: I can't tell the difference. It's still as sinfully slow as it's always been. Budget computers in my school's IT room outpace my Mac when it comes to the Flash Player (although having said that, my dad's Intel Mac runs Flash content incredibly well).
    Mac player doesn´t always and in general run with opengl support,it only does so if you have a certain mac generation,use a certain browser etc.
    If you don´t have any good playback performance you probably don´t have the right mac/browser combo.

    That´s also the thing that annoys me a bit,i´d like it if there was the general support for the lowest denominator 3d card/openGl rendering support specs on all major desktop platforms/OS, right now you have an advantage on a very specific certain setup cause yeah,they´re only into adding as much as the system gives the player with that setup . Let´s have at least the lowest spec support on all platforms and we´re a huge step further.

    I think Macromedia was a bit ahead of the time with Shockwave director back in the day when they added hardware acceleration, 3d cards weren´t as common as they are now and highspeed web connections were way more expensive and way less widespread,too so plugin size mattered way more,too.
    (Next to many other reasons for it not reaching its potential like the director plugin was already cluttered up before, director never had a strong open source dev community like flash which would max out the capabilities together, 3d art creation was way more expensive and done by way less people than now etc etc)

    With flash they are going the opposite direction, so more like squeezing out as much performance as they can with the current setup before they stepwise (and in small steps) add higher hardware requirements. I think that´s a good thing in general, but yup, on the web connection speed,user hardware standards and technology is evolving with big steps and as i said before, i think its about time something gets done on that end to keep flash as dominating as it is right now.
    Last edited by tomsamson; 03-28-2007 at 09:02 PM.

  2. #62
    M.D. mr_malee's Avatar
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    would be super if an Adobe tech guy hung around here and gave us some inside information about where Adobe's heading with Flash.

    Maybe Adobe's forum could give more info.

    thanks for clearing those 3D questions up tom.
    lather yourself up with soap - soap arcade

  3. #63
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    np and well,you could post something on tinic´s blog: http://www.kaourantin.net/
    (He already posted about limits of software rendering there not that long ago)

  4. #64
    M.D. mr_malee's Avatar
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    i like this quote

    It really does not matter at that point, without GPU hardware support there is pretty much nothing we can do anymore on modern CPUs when it comes to graphics performance.
    so umm, do something about it
    lather yourself up with soap - soap arcade

  5. #65
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    I just hope flash isn't completely changed around~

    I had a hard time learning how to make new frames the first time

    haha (what a noob)

  6. #66
    Hey Timmy!!! walsher's Avatar
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    Wow, alot of great info going on in here.

    Thanks for the cool links Tom. I'll definitley have to check those out when I get the time.

    Been really impressed with what I'm reading for Flash CS3. I really like the idea of changing animations to actionscript. Always had a hard time doing animtions with as so I'm sure this could help. Also help with file size too. The debugger and script assistence sound great. I've been alot of the guys at work always complaining with how AS debug doesn't work like VB or some of the others. Even alot of the new animation tools sound cool. Should help with quicker design's and great looking graphics.

  7. #67
    Script kiddie VENGEANCE MX's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tomsamson
    Mac player doesn´t always and in general run with opengl support,it only does so if you have a certain mac generation,use a certain browser etc.
    If you don´t have any good playback performance you probably don´t have the right mac/browser combo.
    http://www.kaourantin.net/archive/20...s_archive.html

    Requirements that Tinic lists:

    Quartz Extreme compatible graphics card (definitely got that)
    Safari web browser (which I use religiously)
    OS X 10.2 or newer (I have 10.4.9)
    G4 or higher processor (I have a G5)

    'Course, when I use Shark to profile Safari, I don't find any OpenGL processes, but profiling the standalone player, I saw a GeForceFX process (ie, my graphics card). Not really sure what to make of that. Tinic also mentioned the OpenGL profiler, but I really have no idea how to use it.

    [EDIT] Mr_malee, PowerPC version of Mac Flash Player is 1,863 Kb. Universal Binary (for PowerPC and Intel processors) is 4,097 Kb.
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  8. #68
    Senior Member Ray Beez's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tomsamson
    all not true (besides translating layer needed maybe but the flash audience neither the flash content developers should have to worry about that)
    Tom, I'm shocked to hear this from someone of your experience. If it could all be done so transparently, then why is something as simple as "cache as bitmap" something devs have to conciously turn on? and why if anything within a cached movieclip changes dynamically, the caching turns off and all speed benefits are lost? Why wasn't the caching ability just hidden in the player engine for all to benefit from if it's that simple?

    I just checked out that Swiff Player and it is SLOWER than Macromedia Flash Player 8. Whatever man... I think you just don't understand the limitations required for using 3D hardware.

  9. #69
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Beez
    Tom, I'm shocked to hear this from someone of your experience. If it could all be done so transparently, then why is something as simple as "cache as bitmap" something devs have to conciously turn on? and why if anything within a cached movieclip changes dynamically, the caching turns off and all speed benefits are lost? Why wasn't the caching ability just hidden in the player engine for all to benefit from if it's that simple?
    you´re comparing apples with bananas there, cacheAsBitmap is something completely different than the topic we´re talking about here.
    The topic here was that the gpu would help out with all or some rendering side workload to reduce the heap on the cpu.
    CacheAsBitmap doesn´t do something like that, what it does is that normally a vector shape would be recalculated new each frame refresh and to avoid that for shapes which don´t change, the shape is cached in ram (more its bitmap representation). That way you get around recalculating it the next frame or any frame it doesn´t change. The problem is that once it changes,as long as you have the feature turned on, it would have to get cached again in its new form so that would lead to slowdown, that´s why it can be turned on and off.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ray Beez
    I just checked out that Swiff Player and it is SLOWER than Macromedia Flash Player 8. Whatever man... I think you just don't understand the limitations required for using 3D hardware.
    As i said one thing to consider with that player is that its way old so you have to run equally old content with it, maybe you tried a newer movie with it.
    Still, i´ve tested several older flash movies which were made up of vector animations and where my dual core (not that that helps much with the current player) 3 gig cpu can´t handle them smoothly in fullscreen playback this player could do so (while also allowing 3d effects like projecting the animation on all sides of a cube rotating in 3d space).
    See the screenshot of the xiao movie i watched with it.
    (also you´re sure you turned use hardware accelartion on once running a movie?)
    I also said that Adobe probably could implement things better than the developers of that thing could do. I´m sure this won´t run equally good on various systems due to few/no testing/implementing ressources on developer side.
    I think Adobe showd pretty well with their previous beta releases and test phases for some player versions that they can pull of such new tech introduction quite nicely,so yeah,i´m not really worried they could pull it off nicely if they´re into it.
    Last edited by tomsamson; 03-29-2007 at 04:22 PM.

  10. #70
    Hype over content... Squize's Avatar
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    Another new version of Flash, another big debate about 3D and openGL support.

    It's like the F8 launch all over again

    Here's a little prediction. When F9 pops out, how long before the thread entitled "What do you think of Flash9?" has a statement along the lines of "Well, they've done nothing for game developers, why couldn't they have done <whatever>".

    Yeah I'm back from a week in the sun to dirty smelly rain soaked London :|

    Squize.

  11. #71
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Squize
    When F9 pops out, how long before the thread entitled "What do you think of Flash9?" has a statement along the lines of "Well, they've done nothing for game developers, why couldn't they have done <whatever>".

    well,this time such ramblings seem to pop up shortly before the new version is finally released. My hope is that with the next version the requests come up early and with loud (many) voice(es) enough so that there´s something done about it for the upcoming release

    Quote Originally Posted by Squize
    Yeah I'm back from a week in the sun to dirty smelly rain soaked London :|

    welcome back blue sorry about the weather (in case that helps: it rained here today,too )
    Last edited by tomsamson; 03-29-2007 at 07:24 PM.

  12. #72
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    What is the lifespan of software release date versions? I'm thinking a year and a half, but the gap between After Effects between 7 and now seemed relatively small this time.

  13. #73
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    The timespan between software version releases varies a lot, but yeah, i have the feeling it got shorter and shorter,too. (And you´re right in case of After Effects it was really short).
    You have to see for yourself if there are enough useful improvements and additions in your eyes to make it worth to buy the new version. I only saw a short video bit regarding additions in the newest After Effects, the bone pupped animating feature seemed kinda nice (looked like it would allow to place markers on a still image to then animate that as if it was a ragdoll).

  14. #74
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    I agree: The decision that a lot of people usually make at times like this is if the ends justify the means of purchasing new software at the expense of how recent your old software is. Like I didn't know Adobe was going to flat out re-release everything, including AE7...otherwise I wouldn't have bought it. But now that I have it, I don't see me buying another until at least the next one comes out. I haven't looked at the specs, but I'm pretty sure that the new features wouldn't warrant buying AE again. 7 is pretty solid as is.

    Plus I thought Flash was coming out a bit later than April (a lot of people was talking June-July).

    I do think it's finally time to move on from MX if anyone still has it as a flagship piece of software (I have Studio 8 right now). I do hope it lasts awhile though. CS3 looks pretty good overall.

    Master Collection? I gotta win the goddamn lottery

  15. #75
    M.D. mr_malee's Avatar
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    i get the feeling Adobe and other major corporations act like the advertising industry, always gotta stay fresh and keep people interested. New releases gets everyone excited again and i like that. It also brings in allot of new people or people from a different area of programming and design
    lather yourself up with soap - soap arcade

  16. #76
    Yes we can tomsamson's Avatar
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    yeah,exactly. Also since MS is about to make a big impact with their expression suite as it seems it kinda turned into a race of the big boys..

  17. #77
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    well its not only a race in the 2d- industry but 3d as well. Just insanve how short the release span lately has become for major packages such as 3dsmax or Maya- they even release .5 packages wich are in 3dsmax always the most unstable and worse releases.
    Kind of sad,- I am happy with some new releases but as already said some dont qualify that much for a new version. After effects is just one of them.

  18. #78
    Script kiddie VENGEANCE MX's Avatar
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    I'm gonna skip Flash CS3, like I did with Flash MX 2004. All I need from CS3 is AS3, so I'm sticking with my Flash 9 Public Alpha. And if that ever expires or anything, I'll start working out how to use Flex instead.
    http://www.birchlabs.co.uk/
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  19. #79
    Senior Member Boombanguk's Avatar
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    I think the problem Adobe is having, and will increasingly have is which of these products do what. What I mean by that is they are starting to overlap in what they can do. And Flash especially has always tried to be all things to all people. The logical next step is for Flash 10 to incorporate some of Directors goodies, and that includes hardware acceleration. Even with all the issues that come along with that, its something which really needs to be done. I'm sure they can do it in such a way so we don't end up with wildly varying performance. Flash primarily needs to be a website/rich media creation tool, with (and I hate to say this) games being 3rd. Having said that, theres more then enough in F8 alone to keep game creators like myself happy for the next 2 years.

  20. #80
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    dont underestimate Flash Lite 2.1,- I could imagine that even the next flash Player still doesn´t support 3d hardware trianglization- because one major strength is the paralel stream the flash platform follows- all with the same package (pc,ppc,mobile,game hardware (PSP),...). If they try the horrible plugin dependence like director not only it would split the dvelopers (the ones who like working with it/ who can and the ones who dont) but also the platforms and as such a big lost on clients and platform.
    I mean how ****ty would that be if a website informs you that your graphic card doesn´t support DX9 and thus abborts the website (reminds me of some other company)

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