

Flash Player Molehill preview released - hakim
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/incubator/

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blocke
I view this development very positively. Flash is being positioned as being
the cutting edge in browser gaming. With Linux support too!

It will take years for browsers to catch up and in the meanwhile we have the
capability of hosting games as complex as MMOs like World of Warcraft within a
browser all with one fairly universal browser plugin.

It's time for browser games to move past sprites and tiles.

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wmf
Should the universal browser plugin be Flash or NaCl?

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cpeterso
Flash is more than a browser plugin; Flash brings a mature developer ecosystem
(developers, designers, Adobe and third-party tools).

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matthew-wegner
Unity announced they are working on Flash Player export via Molehill (and
presumably Adobe Alchemy): [http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/02/27/unity-
flash-3d-on-the-we...](http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/02/27/unity-flash-3d-on-
the-web/)

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seanalltogether
This is a really smart move for them. The value of unity has always been in
the authoring environment and not the runtime.

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hakim
If you install the Incubator release of the player, there are some live demos
to try out at <http://away3d.com/away3d-4-0-alpha-release-broomstick>

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pedrokost
After watching some videos on their website I was completely amazed. The
opportunities that this API creates are amazing. I can't wait to see some 3D
games for the browser. Adobe is pushing the limits again by incorporating some
very low level graphics APIs. Recently it also updated the Flash player with
stage video that also takes use of the GPU. Flash has always been just that,
it brought to the user what the browser alone did not.

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tiles
Advanced 3D in Flash has been an attractive idea for some time. I'm surprised
Adobe didn't release this earlier in advance of WebGL as a possible
competitor.

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pcmccull
Zombie Tycoon: <http://molehill.zombietycoon.com/>

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modeless
Can anyone find online documentation? I want to know how it compares to WebGL.
Is it OpenGL-like, DirectX-like, or a wacky new API? What shader language is
supported? Is GPGPU possible? What's their story on extensions? Do they
support compressed textures, floating-point textures, non-power-of-two
textures, vertex texture fetch?

Edit: the best thing I've found so far is here:
<http://www.bytearray.org/?p=2555> Apparently Adobe invented their own wacky
new API and shader language, which seems like a questionable decision. Still
looking for something more detailed.

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unsigner
GPGPU is useless for mass gaming. The underpowered GPUs that will run most of
the in-browser games will have trouble rendering the game itself, much less
help with other tasks.

This is true for gaming applications in general, even on consoles and PCs with
powerful cards. Game developers need the GPU to do graphics, and can find
enough work for it.

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Raphael_Amiard
Without mentionning they already have trouble finding tasks for the multiple
cpus we already have.

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BoppreH
Finally, 3D at an affordable cost! (I hope)

Flash has always been great for experimental games. In a few hours you can
make a functioning prototype, upload it to a big website and let people see
your work. I look at Kongregate and Newgrounds as the programmer's equivalent
of deviantART.

I would love to see HTML5 catch up with this one day, but until that I'll be
using Flash to play with. And now with more liberty!

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BoppreH
If you are having performance problems, make sure you have "Enable Hardware
Acceleration" checked on the right-click -> settings -> display menu.

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tomlin
This can all be done in HTML5 :)

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chipsy
No, it can't.

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bd
Some parts can, some not, some are better in HTML5 / WebGL, some are better in
Flash / Molehill.

GPU bottlenecked things should be more or less similar, CPU bottlenecked
things are currently faster in Flash.

Flash has more troubles integrating with the rest of the browser stack (DOM
layers compositing).

According to sparse info so far, Molehill will be limited by DirectX 9
capabilities, which is also the case for WebGL with ANGLE rendering backend on
Windows but not for WebGL with OpenGL rendering backend on Windows / Linux /
OSX (these should have capabilities of OpenGL ES 2.0).

Which means if you have a high-end graphics card, you should be able to
squeeze out more from it with WebGL. Also work-in-progress are WebGL
extensions, which will expose even more GPU capabilities.

