3D: Flash vs HTML5
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- Pupsipu0
Typical misinformation PR from Boz. All those CSS3 properties were temporary and most browsers already support non-prefixed CSS properties. They had good reason to do it, it's a better approach to transitional APIs, but an easy thing for PR to poke at.
So far WebGL is pretty far ahead of molehill. Its main problem is when IE will implement it. You couldn't do those WebGL demos in Papervision for Flash 9 or Flash 10's joke 3D APIs. WebGL demos have too many polygons for that.
Papervision for Flash 10 was abandoned months before molehill was announced but after months of work, since Adobe doesn't release a development timeline. They probably called the Papervision dudes quietly and said, "oh hey, we're making a low level API, don't bother." It treats its developer community like shit, which is why there isn't one.
A big advantage of HTML/JS/WebGL over Flash is the developer community. It is a lot bigger, so there are a lot more 3D libraries, a lot more confidence that browsers are the platform of choice and Flash is a niche for fuck knows what, it doesn't have a single feature that's not on HTML5's roadmap.
- ukit0
If you are interested in trying out WebGL and 3D Canvas stuff, I suggest checking out Mr. Doob's three.js:
https://github.com/mrdoob/three.…
He has written a JS library that makes it very easy and concise to write this stuff. Not any more challenging than working with Papervision was in AS3.
Also for an overview of coding WebGL without any frameworks, there are a great series of tutorials here:
http://learningwebgl.com/blog/?p…
I think HTML5 will be used a lot for delivering web based games and apps on a cross-platform basis. And these will increasingly incorporate WebGL as support comes on board in more browsers (which will happen this year in the majority of them).
- Boz0
Detrus you are delusional fanboy who can't accept the fact that open standards are not necessarily the best solution.
and LOL at PR..
CSS is a mess and you have to write code 3 times for different browsers and use transitional APIs and frameworks just to make that shit work, but to you that's just a better approach and everyone pointing the bad things about it is running a PR campaign.. LOL at getting riled up about people poking holes in that mess.
So you offer no real reasons or explanation but only your personal speculation.. and in that regard you fail.
Show me how WebGL is ahead of Molehill in both quality and performance instead of pulling your opinion out of your ass. I bet you haven't even used the new Molehill APIs with the new Incubator build to make such a claim. So nonsense really. WebGL is already so behind Molehill it's not even funny.
and BWAHAHAH at "they called the dudes and told them don't bother".. HAHAHAH.. You are a fucking joke. Seriously, where are you pulling this shit from? If you are going to argue, argue with facts. Papervision is still being used a lot and they will be upgrading it to use Molehill APIs.
Since you are completely uneducated and uninformed, Molehill is not an engine, it's not going to "replace" Papervision3D, it's a very low level API that works directly with GPU and allows everyone to build GPU accelerated engines. This means that Papervision 3D can release a new build library that will take advantage of Molehill and full GPU acceleration.. they are not competitive on any level but Papervision3D is building upon those low level GPU APIs. Which again shows your comment as complete nonsense.
And all you have to do is to go http://www.papervision3d.org/ and see the 3D shit that you just saw in that video. But this was possible in the pasts 2-3 years with Flash Player.
Pupsipu: "A big advantage of HTML/JS/WebGL over Flash is the developer community. It is a lot bigger, so there are a lot more 3D libraries"
Like what? And who's coding in WebGL right now? Google engineers to show demos? What community? Do you have any idea how big of a Flash developers community is? Not to mention the tools accessible to make these things happen.
LOL at Flash being niche with 93% of computers supporting it while WebGL capable browsers are like 0.1% and will never work with IE6, iE7 and so on. Please STFU you have no clue.
- ukit0
I have no doubt standards are better, in theory at least.
What would you rather have, a single company developing technology on their own schedule or multiple companies collaborating to make it happen and then competing to deliver the best rendering engine?
Now in reality the history of HTML has been filled with clusterfucks and slow progress but that's largely been because there were not companies dominating the web that believed in standards. Now that Google, Apple and Mozilla are out there leading the way, Microsoft has suddenly been whipped into shape. Look at how much JavaScript performance has improved over the past years with the competition between Chrome, IE, FF, etc... Would we really have seen that pace of development if all scripting was handled through a plugin developed by a single private company that monopolized the market?
And in regard to this topic, you have admit that standards actually beat Flash to the punch in this case. Adobe is scrambling to get 3D Flash out there precisely because of the threat of standards based WebGL eclipsing them.
Unfortunately for them WebGL now has the full support of companies like Google...who see HTML5 as key to their business strategy in terms of moving applications, games, etc to the web. No way are they going to rely on Adobe's proprietary plugin to do that, which is going to be held hostage to their development cycle.
- Boz0
and btw, that same community you are harping about has had last 15 years to make something out JS and crap and they did nothing. The pinnacle of web design and development was DHTML with flying cursors until Yahoo created JQuery. So great, it takes 15 years to make something work even remotely decent.
All of your assumption are based on several almost impossible scenarios:
1. That all browser developers will somehow unite to make sure WebGL, HTML5 works the same. Which it absolutely won't. They are in hardcore competition with each other and it's matter of time when they'll start adding shit to make themselves more "advanced". We have already seen what's happening with video.
2. WebGL is not even in the HTML5 final specification, and neither is canvas 3D.. So it's a flying target and everybody can use it however they think is best.
3. There are no tools. The reason why Flash became ubiquitous and much more compatible and independent from HTML/JS/CSS on any browser is because we had tools for both designers and developers. Not a single tool exists that will allow you build content and interactive stuff that comes close to Flash.
4. Flash runs ok now and will run identically on any browser, any platform by being independent from the browsers and all the shit that HTML5/WebGL will suffer from.
5. And lastly security.. WebGL has had this security critical flaw since last year and nobody is fucking fixing it. That's the problem with open standards.. There's no one responsible to fix that shit. I've already posted a security issue that is just now coming to light but has been present fro a while now and is very hard to fix.
It would be beautiful if we could have the same capabilities and options as Flash, great tools fro WebGL and every browser would work and render shit the same way and we just concentrate on creative beautiful things that run without any plugins everywhere, instead of running around and finding 5 different frameworks to workaround browser incompatibilities.
But this is a pipe dream. A delusion by those who have a hard on for HTML5 as if it's going to replace Flash..
Understand this.. Flash and AIR and Molehill is not going anywhere and being built and improved by one company is making it superior in many ways over the open standards because it can evolve faster and be independent while being massively ubiquitous.
- ukit0
And that's why long term, I highly suspect HTML5/ WebGL is the future. It simply makes more sense, from the POV of companies like Google, to support standards based technologies which they have greater control over.
Short term Molehill will no doubt make a splash, although how far along WebGL will be by then will be interesting to see. We'll see what happens though, it's a bit pointless to argue over, and let's face it, all this stuff offers exciting development possibilities:)
- Mojo0
@Boz: Thanks for replying.
I couldn't agree more, Flash has done 3D for a long time, and when Molehill comes I think it really opens the web to a new realm of possibilities, with proper GPU access Flash can now do serious gaming and clientless 3D applications over the web, and it's already proven itself to be powerful today. I have no doubts that Molehill is technically a better solution.
VHS & Beta.
I think WebGL will be used casually, as mentioned, cross-platform games etc, but at the moment appears to be developing slowly and is very limited. I don't believe that WebGL will catch up with Molehill any time soon. However, I still suspect there is a place for WebGL, other than cross-platform games.
I can imagine the benefits of building sites in our mature markup, and easily adding in 3D to enhance a website's interaction, and take HTML websites more into the realm of the 'Flash Microsite' area, which is good because for information and the structure of the internet, HTML makes the most sense. It really is a bit shit at the moment when you view a content heavy site in Flash and you can't easily print a selection, zoom text etc.
The future of Flash?
There's a clear direction of 'general purpose' (not micro or 'rich experience' sites) websites getting more 'rich' as presentational/interactive technologies (CSS3, device APIs etc) mature and become more widely supported.
Will the improvement of HTML5 technologies (inc CSS3) mean that Flash becomes less and less relevant for 'rich' (as defined above) sites? We can clearly see that people are now able to do some of the things Flash could only do, in HTML.
And following on from that question, does the future of Flash lie in GPU 3D?
Side questions:
> Is Flash becoming less relevant as a tool for developing applications because of Silverlight maturing?
> Will 3D ever really be an important part of 'general purpose' websites? VRML v2 anyone?
- Boz0
Here's what I believe will happen.
HTML5/WebGL will be used for A LOT more things. That's undoubtedly true. Maybe not now but in the coming years a lot of less complex, HTML5 driven apps will be present more then before. This is natural and it's great.
So there will be less need for many things to use Flash for.. That's without a doubt. But as Google understands and sees and the reason they integrated Flash into Chrome is that we will be building truly fantastic experiences by utilizing both Flash and HTML5 for example.
The 2 are not excluding. Flash Molehill plus HTML5 stuff like local storage and similar will work like magic and JS will be used as a bridge between the too.. not to mention apps that need to use micrphone and camera and so on through Flash but are basically HTML5 apps.
I'm supporter of HTML5.. I love it.. I think it's moving the web forward and I have no issues for it to replace many functionalities Flash does..but unfortunately no matter how much someone supports open standards you realize that they are not appropriate for everything. Especially in commercial projects where security and DRM and stuff like this is needed.
It is also important to note that even though it would be cool, I"m highly skeptical that HTML5/WebGL will EVER come close to the speed and platform compatibility that Flash/AIR will give us with Molehill. I think the fact that you can bulild everything in Flash/AS3 for games or interactive experiences and be able to release it as desktop app for app stores (like Mac App Store, or new intel app store or similar) and then release the same thing on iOS and Android and then the same thing on Blackberry.
Try making all those environments behave and process HTML5/WebGL the same. If that happens I'll call it magic. But it's really a dream in reality.. With Flash/AIR that becomes very much possible.
- Pupsipu0
I'm not a fanboy of HTML5 or Flash, I think they're a waste of people's time. They're technological legacy, shit we'd rather be rid of but we can't because of some decade old successes.
I'd rather have some framework to run a variety of APIs and languages on all computers, so Browsers, Flash, Silverlight, Objective-C, Unity would just be personal preferences, but that's not currently practical.
There's no doubt who the delusional fanboys are. You're as crazy for Flash as dh is crazy for open standards. I don't care one bit for either, they both promised the moon and delivered capabilities from the 90's.
Again, the ROME WebGL demo was not possible in Papervision 2 years ago. It may seem that way at a glance, but not if you count the polygons and framerates. The most popular 3D engine for WebGL is Mr. Doob's Three.js. Notice how Mr. Doob, a Flash superstar, doesn't share a religious devotion to Flash. There are lots of other WebGL engines, as many, if not more than Molehill engines.
The last posts on the Papervision blog are from 2010 http://blog.papervision3d.org/. Seems most people moved on to Away3D or others because Papervision for F10 was abandoned, while Away3D kept up.
As far as community size, Github is a good enough indicator and ActionScript is like #15 there. No doubt Flash's community is smaller and produces less libraries.
So far Molehill capable Flash is the same 0.1%. WebGL and Molehill will come out around the same time. Both have hardware acceleration that won't be consistent across devices and OSs.
And as far as your blabbering hostile responses, I'll just assume your Audi broke down.
- Boz0
@Mojo
I think you are completely right.. i think WebGL will find it's place but I just don't think it will be a main choice for 3d for a long time if ever. It really depends on tools. If we see a lot of good tools in producing WebGL content it might allow non-Flash people to build some 3D interactivity.. but it's gonna be tough.
Future of Flash? 3D games on the web, rich apps and games on mobile devices, tablets, TVs and so on. It hink It will still have usage for the websites and similar but not as much because JQuery and HTML5 and CSS and web fonts have matured enough to finally do some things that Flash was used for. And that's really great.
As far as Silverlight goes I think that thing is dead on the web. It will be platform/technology used to develop for Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 apps and basically future Microsoft platforms that deal with some kind of apps or whatever but that's about it. I don't see anyone using it on the web as Microsoft themselves lifted their hands from it for the web.
- BattleAxe0
A hypothetical, ok so you are able to do 3D in all browsers , now what? More eye candy and spining logos? What do you expect to be building in 3D?
- ukit0
Let's be honest...neither of these platforms are going to have super easy "tools" to work with. When you talk about the Adobe racecar demo or the Google Quake demo in WebGL, its not like some web designer with a working knowledge of code is going to be able to pick up a copy of Flash and create that anytime soon:)
Look at Papervision...it was largely adopted by people on the leading edge of Flash dev, not the average Flash user. No reason to think Molehill will be any easier, especially right off the bat. Even a tool like Unity3D that is much more robust and visual than the Flash IDE for creating 3D content requires skills in a number of areas including programming, 3D modeling, etc...
- Boz0
@BattleAxe
Well here's an idea I had but i couldn't realize without real 3D support (Papervision was not enough and the quality was crap)..
I wanted to build an app in Flash that would allow me to create a rich interactive catalog and tracking of how far your house is built (when you buy a house that's being built by KBHomes for example).
So you would be able to pick item from a builder's catalog of products, kitchens and so on and put them and when your house is built you go through the floorplan and you can put those catalog items directly inside the house and see how they look without going through the pain of going to the actual store, picking stuff and so on.
Then you would have an app or a widget for your desktop you could have and it would be updated with news from the builder in regards to your house but you would see every 3d aspect as your house is being built.
I mean I thought about this years ago and but it wasn't possible.. now with 3D you can build complete houses and have interactivity in building it out in 3d, different texturing, and so on on fly.
- Mojo0
> Playing games
> Apps/services: House/room planners, anything involving a real-life environment, 3D design related,
> eCommerce: See your product purchase in 3D (with GPU APIs, I suspect that the 3D data for a reasonably complex 3D model + texture wouldn't be too heavy on the bandwidth)- Some simple examples, but I'm sure there is plenty of potential utility in better 3D.Mojo
- Mojo0
> Education
- Pupsipu0
And many more tools exist for HTML to build content sites. Not as many tools for what you call "interactive," otherwise known as difficult to interact with F-W-A style sites.
Your assumption that Flash will run perfectly on all devices, while HTML5/WebGL will be inconsistent is just a fanboy dream. They'll both be a mess.
Maybe Flash tech is better, will be developed faster, but very likely that its community will remain small. And it's more difficult to develop when the community is smaller, less libraries, blogs, etc.
I doubt that Flash will be developed faster though, Google has traditional, financial motivations for pushing web capabilities forward. Same as MS IE had and it moved fast, until business objectives were met. Mozilla was some weird open source experiment with weird priorities. You're basing predictions of the future on a misunderstanding of history.
- team_zissou0
id like to see a browser based 'Doom' game... i might play it for a few minutes on my break.
- Boz0
Here try this. It's an Indie Unity based game that I'm sure they will release as Flash once FP11 is out. It's truly awesome.
- BattleAxe0
Puts Devils Advocate Mask on:
All things listed exist in app form, or via rendred Quicktimes and exporting assets from 3D software like Max, Maya etc
I guess what I am getting at is I do feel The Web is dead and 3D wont save it, devices will get smaller and be app driven cause of markets (itunes, Droid Store etc)
I have already seen some great 3d games done in Flash , and nice presentations of 3D models / assets or consumer products done in 3D via apps, or slick Flash sites
While people in the Creative industry will still need powerful desktops , what about Joe Shmoe ? iPad 3 and Xoom 2 will be more and more appealing for some vs a desktop even laptop
3D content will only be as good as its producers and I dont see them going to the Web to make a living as a 3D artist , when game companies , military, and industrial sectors are all looking for Apps
