Adobe cancels CS5 public beta

[tomsamson]

Announced today (see http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform...eta_for_f.html and elsewhere on Adobe related sites) Adobe has cancelled the public beta for flash CS5 ide.
As many here probably know i´m not shy when its about openly stating my view on things, complaining when i see it necessary and praising when i see its deserved.
In this case its a mixed bag:
While i´m sure many will be sad about this i think its very positive for all when Adobe spends the time to improve CS5 further on before it gets released.

[mr_malee]

I agree. Make the program fast and stable first. Fix all of CS4's problems the add features.

[tomsamson]

yeah, exactly. I think it would have been better to postpone the public beta test phase than to fully cancel it and with their argumentation there stating they want to get it out as early as possible instead of doing a public beta phase they´re moving themselves into a tough position if the resulting product isn´t as people expect on release. But yeah, whatever they gotta do to get it into nice shape before release, i´m all for it.

[tonypa]

That is really weird considering they announced public beta only in October. Something has changed in last 2 months. I wonder what?

[Incrue]

http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=118
So unimpressive

[dandylion13]

Something has changed in last 2 months. I wonder what?

The overwhelming negative reaction that the iPhone support got.

[tonypa]

iPhone support got negative reaction? The comments I read were all about "woohoo!! We will be very rich soon".

[tomsamson]

There are some who already are in gold rush mode and then there are others like here:
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2410
My stance is that it would surely be nice to be able to deploy flash content to iphone but just talking about what has been publicly announced they still have no automatic and full on hardware acceleration for all graphical operations going. Most is still handled by the cpu alone and for what can be handled off to the gpu the app developer has to set cacheAsSurface flag on display objects and see if and how much that helps.

Some will not care and release stuff no matter if it performs well enough or is comparable in features and that could have a very bad effect on flash´s reputation in whole. Others will be disappointed if it does not run well and switch to other options.

Well, i´ll leave it at we´ll see how it turns out on release, they better push hard after all the hype they built up.

[Pazil]

Nice demo vid link, Incrue! It seems they finally added actual, real, tangible, no joke auto-completion!

Otherwise, the improvements weren't really relevant to me...I'm just sick of not hearing "Hardware acceleration"...

[dandylion13]

..I'm just sick of not hearing "Hardware acceleration"...

Me too. I've been begging Macromedia/Adobe for this for for the last 10 years!

Strangely enough however, GPU access was one of the things that killed Director. The compatibility and installation issues were so bad that it gave Shockwave a really bad reputation among ordinary users, even though developers loved it. One of the reasons the Flash player flourished was because is it *didn't* have GPU access, so even though it's performance was crippled, it didn't crash people's machines and was easy to install.

I guess I'm in a cranky mood today but CS5's iPhone support is broken - no two ways about it. It looks like a good feature on the box, but any developers who want to create quality iPhone apps (which should mean all developers!) will never touch it in its present state:

a) Performance is dead-in-the-water.
b) It's probably illegal, so Apple could axe your app and sue Adobe at any time. Try explaining that to your clients.

If Adobe needs to keep CS5 in the oven a little longer to fix these problems, I'm all for it! No need to rush it out, I'm happy with CS4 for now

But please, Adobe, we don't need another shell-game of fiddley little insignificant UI adjustments or more useless tools like the deco tool, or half-baked buggy tools like the Project Panel. (Adobe should have coded that in-house rather than simply porting Grant Skinner's, it needs better integration.) If you're going to give us iPhone support do it right, but better yet, spend another year or two and give us real 3D... which we've been asking for since Flash 3.

Wow.. I am in a cranky mood today.. !!! Sorry!!!

[joshstrike]

Well, here's hoping Adobe at least wrote an actual Project panel into CS5 and got rid of that horrible Grant Skinner hack.
Not that I'm ever going back to running Flash. The IDE just gets worse with every rev. At least in Flash 5, when Macromedia was running things, you could scroll through pages of code smoothly. It's all been downhill since then.

[tonypa]

I would like to play with drag-and-drop physics engine in CS5.

Strangely enough however, GPU access was one of the things that killed Director. The compatibility and installation issues were so bad that it gave Shockwave a really bad reputation among ordinary users, even though developers loved it. One of the reasons the Flash player flourished was because is it *didn't* have GPU access, so even though it's performance was crippled, it didn't crash people's machines and was easy to install.

I agree.

I don't see GPU acceleration as good thing. It means more code in player, more bugs and most importantly it means the game will run at hugely different speeds depending on the hardware. It may not work at all for some people with old computers. I rather have a game that runs anywhere at reasonably same speed.

[tomsamson]

I´d agree with you if we made that discussion ten years ago when many computers didn´t have some sort of 3d gpu.
With director it could be argued whether gpu support in general was too early back in what was its, 2002/3? or that it was just not done that well regarding after the initial implementation never propperly developed further or optimized for any newer hardware in good way.

The problem is without hardware acceleration flash can´t compete on the graphical front and even on the code execution speed fronts at all, flash designers have been moaning about this since at least flash 5 and there just can´t be anything done that brings even close to as much performance boost as when all graphical side things would be done via the gpu.
Adobe not wanting or not able to get propper gpu usage going has then done one bad thing after the other on other ends "to gain better performance".

What is the result now without making full use of the graphics chip?
Flash content, especially what counts as highend content in flash terms, has tcrazy high hardware requirements, usually needs huge amounts of ram and a very fast cpu.
While at the same time if the content even only made use of common 3d gpu specs of 10 years ago the same content could run way better on a way older system, one with way less ram and way slower/older cpu.

And ok, well, obviously one can discuss pros and cons when its about the desktop/ web player.
And with Adobe, yeah, sorry to say, but meanwhile, unless i can try a release web plugin from them for two weeks i won´t believe them having made it in good technical execution, too. And in badly done way hardware acceleration indeed can be a bad thing, when its not optimized for all sorts of hardware out there.

But then what about deploy for different devices like iPhone? There the specs the user has is known, so it should be possible for Adobe to use that propperly, no?
They should use the gpu for all graphical operations so the content runs as fast as with other technologies on the 4 device types available, right?

They are making that deploy to iPhone feature there and even with that most of the graphical side things are still not done via the gpu at all and therefore have to be done on the cpu. On slower systems that is a total killer performancewise and when Adobe exactly knows the specs of the hardware their content will run on i don´t see a propper reason for why they don´t make propper full use of it and instead push flash developers in the position where their content is again among the worst running or most limited ones.
Well, the reason they have is probably they rather want to have flash on all platforms as soon a spossible rather than do it step by step and actually have it run well on any of the platforms first.before going to support the next.

[Pazil]

I bet there's some very old CEO in Adobe that lived through the demise of Director, and because of it he has nightmares whenever someone mentions "GPU Acceleration"...

Strangely enough however, GPU access was one of the things that killed Director. The compatibility and installation issues were so bad that it gave Shockwave a really bad reputation among ordinary users, even though developers loved it. One of the reasons the Flash player flourished was because is it *didn't* have GPU access, so even though it's performance was crippled, it didn't crash people's machines and was easy to install.

But then how would you explain other platforms such as the Unity Web Player to have had no major complaints so far? (At least from what I've heard). I'm pretty sure that if a brand new company like Unity can so easily produce a web player that runs lightning fast with 3d applications BECAUSE of GPU acceleration, a seasoned company like Adobe surely can too, can't it?

P.

[dandylion13]

But then how would you explain other platforms such as the Unity Web Player to have had no major complaints so far?

I can't really comment because I don't know anything about the Unity Web Player. Maybe they just implement GPU support wisely? (like tomsamson suggested could be done for Flash.) I don't know

...but, no complaints?? 10 seconds on google turned up this:

http://tigsource.com/articles/2008/0...iraptor-safari

Comments like this:

"I have a 3.2 ghz single-core processor, 1gb of ram, and a Geforce 7800. I can play Bioshock on medium-ish settings, and Oblivion on full, maximum settings. It baffles me why this game won’t work well for me, besides the fact that it’s stuck in the browser"

I like this one:

"Due to horrible lag, my life has suddenly lost meaning"

Oh dear... sounds like Director circa 2000....

If Unity's developers are not taking end user's complaint seriously (or blaming end users for not runnnig the right kit in the right way) it's doomed.

Although it's probably the fault of the developers for not optimizing it or testing the game properly, it was sloppy developers who killed Director as well. (Actually, the developers were good, it was small development budgets that did them in mostly.)

If Adobe implements GPU support for Flash, they have to make sure that a small development team (1 person!) with limited resources (no time or money!) will get great results and 100% compatibilty without having to do vast amounts of testing and optimizing first.

Also, what is Unity's web player installed user base? Maybe less than one percent? That's just a wild guess, no one seems to know:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.p...281da7a5399a34

As one user comments:

"As far as I'm aware, UT does not hand out any live data on the install base"

... I wonder why?

My gut feeling is, if the Unity web player hasn't taken off by now it never will. I think the fact that they're giving away the IDE is a sign of desperation more than anything else. Hopefully I'm wrong, because it's a really cool technology. But personally, I've been burned before by investing a lot of time into learning DOA technologies, so I'm waiting to see how this plays out a little longer.

I think the moral of the story is that you have to keep both developers and users happy to sustain a successful product.. but that's common sense, of course.. !

I still want GPU support in FP11!

[tomsamson]

Man, i just can´t stand it when things are posted like facts which are way off.
Ok, you did a google search and found someone complaining about game x not working well for some users.
How is this a surprise or specific to any technology?
I could link you to around 1000 flash games where in the comments users moan that the game doesn´t run, runs slow or freezed their browser or system.
Such things happen with every technology, important is the percentage of users to which such things happen.
Since i know games like raptor safari are very popular and played by a huge crowd the percentage of people having issues should be reasonably low, have you done some scientific research on the total amount of players, the amount of users with issues and then seen the percentage before saying its doomed?

And when a technology makes no use of the gpu it can´t have issues on that end but in return when like with flash then the technology is massively more taxing on ram and cpu ressources and since with AS3/ f9 player and its garbage collector system also way more prone to memory leakage the technology can have equally bad if not worse issues on other ends.

I can run unity games fine and at good performance on 4 year old pcs while for many flash games on the same machine i can instantly hear how the cpu fan gets much louder as the box tries to keep up the framerate.
Doesn´t mean either flash or unity is doomed, or its the case with all or most users for the same content, it means both can have issues on different ends and its good when things get improved by the company who creates the technology.


Regarding sloppy developers were what killed director, i´d disagree there, it was first Macromedia and then Adobe who didn´t propperly develop the technology further.

Regarding the plugin penetration numbers not getting released:
You don´t have to wonder why, its no surprise that the plugin penetration rate of unity is currently way lower than the one of flash.
Whether the unity guys aren´t into paying a research group to create a penetration figures poll as Adobe does or whether they just want to wait until its higher doesn´t matter to me personally.
I think its important that one can see that nice unity made games attract lots of players today, one can make and sell unity games.

If that´s not enough for you because you think the best or only way to make money with games is when the game gets spread across the internet on as many sites as possible, well, that´s a different topic.

If the one main important thing for you when you make games is that it gets hosted on as many sites as possible, then yes, don´t use anything else than flash until something else has higher plugin penetration figures.

But yeah, there are more and more people who do cool stuff with unity and more and more options to do and release cool stuff with unity in different ways, so i don´t understand the "x is doomed!!!" type statements when the technology clearly is in a constant (exponential actually) uprise since it was created first.

Then statements like it would be a sign of desperation to give the indie version of the ide away for free are total uninformed nonsense, too, sorry.

Go to the unity news blog and you can see that they have received massive investments and are doing very well financially. At the same time they are making the majority of their income with the Advanced/ Pro versions of the IDE. So when they got their massive investments they thought why not give the indie version away for free since we don´t require the money that comes with that anyway.
Having so much money from other ends that you can give away a version of the tool for free instead of asking for 200 bucks for it sounds like the opposite of desperation to me.

While talking about signs of financial desperation ( or just never getting enough) : What really feels heavily like that to me is that Adobe bundles the flash player with a toolbar on download for a good while now and despite the developer base constantly moaning about it they don´t change that.

[tonypa]

Even the speed increase by AS3 has been ignored by many Flash developers because the process of creating a working game is more complicated. I still continue to argue that being clean and simple was the very reason Flash has been successful and other, more powerful technologies have failed.

How much power do you need for successful game exactly? Flash has been more powerful then GameBoy for years so nothing actually stops anyone creating games comparable to legendary titles from that tiny console. We haven´t seen them because there is no way to earn back large scale investments in Flash game, not because Flash Player can not draw fast enough. iPhone did not invent mobile games either, their success is purely based on the online store where developers can earn money directly from customers. That is what we need in Flash too. Not more power but new business model.

[tomsamson]

You bring up some interesting points.
I totally agree with your first paragraph but then it gets a bit shakey i think.
What do you mean with flash is more powerful than the game boy? You mean one could do more in flash than could run on a game boy? Well, no wonder, flash runs on highend pcs unlike game boy games did.
And there the problem comes in, with how flash is set up you have many options how to set things up but really only very few in which it leads to content running at good performance on an average pc. without being too much of a ressource drainer
And then when you go to other devices than highend desktops, let´s say your iPhone or Android phone then it becomes way more apparent when the technology doesn´t make propper use of the gpu for example.
We´re not even talking about highend 3d games not running when done with flash.
One can go to the app store and download the apps made with flash so far and see how even the most basic 2d content doesn´t run at smooth framerates in most cases.
Adobe argues that that´s because it was made with alpha builds and that´s fair, but what is left of the simplicity or other positive sides you talk about when meanwhile even optimizing code in AS3 isn´t enough anymore to gain acceptable performance on lower end devices? I´ve said it for a while, Adobe has to worry about the hardware so developers of content don´t have to, not the other way round.

Your next very interesting point is that there are no ways to monetize games in some ways. I think there that´s one of the main weaknesses of flash actually: games are way easy to rip, decompile, recompile etc.
I know few longtime flash developers who didn´t get one or many of their games grabbed from their site by others who changed it some to remove mochi ads or url locks. As that´s the case that automatically limits or removes many monetizing ways.
That´s a problem at the core of the technology and i don´t see that being changed anytime soon.

[dandylion13]

I still continue to argue that being clean and simple was the very reason Flash has been successful and other, more powerful technologies have failed.

That's absolutely true.

Tomsamson, I know absolutely nothing at all about Unity except what my 10 second google search turned up, so I'm sure all your points about it are true. I defer to your judgment on this.

I also agree with you that Director was in a fragile state of evolution when Macromedia/Adobe lost interest - it could have been saved and made great again. Maybe it was their fault for not protecting developers and end users from the player's incompatibilities.

But here's the issue: You don't find reams and reams of complaints by YouTube users about how the Flash videos are lagging and crashing their system. All they care about is the content. The point at which the technology becomes invisible, it succeeds. To get back on topic, this is the reason that I think Adobe has been so conservative about GPU support.

[Squize]

Word is that Director development is back up and running again, and has been for a good 6 months or so.

Apparently a lot of ex-macromedia guys who are now at Adobe were pretty pissed that Director was allowed to die and have managed to start working on it again in a small team to try and justify throwing more money at it.

Only hearsay though.

Squize.