On Sep 3, 8:28 pm, Ken Railey <[email protected]> wrote: > I can only speak for myself, but I choose to ignore it because: > > 1) It has <0.5 installed base of flash
About 30% of browsers have Shockwave, the vast majority version 11+ (http://www.statowl.com/shockwave.php) About 97% for Flash, mostly 10+. Unity is way under 1%. > 2) Lingo sucks (I wrote many shockwave apps in the bad old days. Really, > it's terrible) It could be a lot better, but I've seen worse. I can use it to get the job done, but I wish it was better. > 3) Director is a mess, seems abandoned by Adobe Surprisingly they've made a lot of improvements over the last year, but their marketing of it is still pathetic. > 5) Last time I checked, the shockwave player still wouldn't run on OSX > without Rosetta (and no versions at all for Linux) It's run natively on OSX in 32-bit for quite some time, and the new release runs natively in 64-bit. > 6) Still entirely closed-source and proprietary, with no free SDK or > compiler kit Well there is the XDK, etc. Again, could be better. > > If I were going to ditch the Flash player over hardware T&L, I think the > obvious direction to go for most 3D apps would be Unity. It's a choice among limited options. For me, the lack of Flash support in Unity and the tiny installed base are deal breakers. I don't want to try to convince users to install a plugin from some company they've never heard of, and most of my users already have Shockwave. Director could be better, but it's way easier than Away3D (sorry guys) and I can work in Flash for large pieces of the application, meaning Director is used for integration and 3D only. And Director is improving. The challenge for Adobe with native 3D in Flash is to go beyond announcing and adding features, and really think about the pipeline. I won't be surprised if they just glue more 3D onto the side of Flash Pro and call it done. I hope they don't do that, because if they really develop a usable 3D development environment it could make a dent in making web 3D a widespread reality, instead of just a niche for games. HTML5 could get really interesting for 3D, but they seem a bit stuck with trying to choose a standard format. O3D was interesting as a demonstration, but it never really went beyond that. At some point I'm sure it will get real and there will be a lot of tools and frameworks, but when? 2012? 2020? > > -Ken > > On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 9:54 PM, valeriuscrowe <[email protected]>wrote: > > > You guys are forgetting about (or choosing to ignore) Shockwave3D, > > which is a very usable Web3D platform with a large installed base > > (way, way bigger than Unity, but not as big as Flash). Adobe has > > announced full AS3 and Flash 10/Flex support, meaning that you can > > wrap Flash movies inside 3D environments inside Shockwave3D. Texture > > your Flex app onto the tree trunk in your enchanted forest, that sort > > of thing. The pipeline from 3ds Max is relatively bullet-proof too, > > but support for other authoring environments is a bit spotty. But > > compared to our favorite Flash based 3D platforms, Shockwave3D is a > > breeze to get models and animations into. of course there's the minor > > matter of having to wrap your head around Lingo, but it's not so bad > > once you get used to it. Just food for thought. > > > Robert
