Flash 3D v Unity 3D
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- Boz0
It's like this.. I'm an Adobe partner.. so I know a bit about this..
Mole Hill 3D API is really the super low level API and part of a larger incentive for Flash Player / AIR to get full GPU acceleration for things other than video.. just as they have done with StageVideo API in Flash Player 10.2, Molehill allows access directly to hardware on the lowest level.
These APIs are not really that easy to code with because they require significant knowledge of how things work with 3d and shaders and all that stuff on a GPU level (this is all very low level) however the great thing about Flash is that we already have several engines that are being ported over now to Molehill APIs.
I like Unity a lot.. it's a great 3d engine and tool (I've checked it out and it's really very nice).. but as the article says, one of the biggest issues with it is that it's another proprietary plugin and people need to download.. I'm not agains that.. but Flash will offer similar quality and quite possibly even more once all of the Flash devs get in on it..and it will be pretty ubiquitous, it will definitely revolutionize online gaming because it is already established and now we will get some kick ass graphics that are super fast.
As far as mobile.. the goal of Adobe team is to integrate the same APIs into the AIR runtime for mobile devices and TVs and leverage the full GPU acceleration of new processing units in devices like Tegra 2.. This is what's going to happen this year and it will be the final obstacle in high performance apps made in AS3/Flash for devices.
I have seen some additional demos and what people are doing (I'm not really that great with 3d programming aka don't know shit about it, so I'll leave the 3d low level engines to other people) and they look very very impressive. Especially stuff from Alternativa3D.
The main thing is that Molehill API is so efficient that it allows large environments with tons of objects, which I haven't really seen in Unity.
I can tell you right now that new Flash Builder, Flex, Flash CS 5.5 will all have upgrade iOS support along with Android and Blackberry. Like packager style.
So when Molehill APIs get into the next revision of AIR (probably not this one 2.6 is getting close to completion, but the one after that or possibly 3.0 that might happen towards the end of the year) it will be included in the AIR Runtime and you will be able to use all these Flash 3D engines build on it.
For those who want to read more about Molehill and AIR/Flash runtime:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologi…