2012-02-21T17:09:20Z Copyright (c) 2012, Rob Bateman ExpressionEngine tag:away3d.com,2012:02:17 tag:away3d.com,2012:/comments/1.692 2012-02-17T14:24:19Z 2012-02-21T17:09:20Z Rob Bateman http://www.infiniteturtles.co.uk
The purpose of the beta release has been to solidify the APIs written while Flash 11 was still in incubator phase, introduce some others after feedback from users and our own internal team members on features and easy of use, and generally stabilise the library codebase. The overall intention has been to produce an update that improves your daily workflow - here are some of the following improvements that have been implemented:

New Texture classes

In order to streamline our GPU implementation in Away3D 4.0, we have to consider data optimisation in a way that keeps GPU upload bandwidth to a minimum. Textures comprise much of the data used in 3D, and as such we have introduced some new classes to assist with optimisation in this area. Instead of automating the creation of texture objects inside materials, Away3D 4.0 introduces the new BitmapTexture class that acts as the data instance of a texture. This can be shared by any number of material classes and is not bound to any single material, allowing the user to easily manage and optimise texture use in a project.

New Geometry handling

The concept of a mesh as a container for geometry data is something that has always been present in Away3D, but the new version puts more emphasis on it than ever. Primitive classes now inherit from geometry to encourage their reuse in mesh instances, and the Mesh class itself has the addition of a geometry property in the first argument of its constructor. By doing this we hope to encourage more efficient re-use of geometry in Away3D 4.0 projects, something that also has significant benefits for GPU use.

Improved mouse interaction

Mouse interaction with 3D objects inside the view have previously relied on data from the GPU for detecting 3D mouse events. This has been a reliable way of resolving interactions, but it comes at a high cost as the GPU in general is only designed to have data travel one way - to the screen. In order to avoid the processing overhead that comes with GPU readback, we have completely re-written mouse interactions for the CPU, using the fast maths operations of Pixel Bender to ensure efficiency. For the rare cases where this is not enough, we have also introduced a super-optimised option to detect mouse events on just the bounding geometry of a 3D object.


Handling new / deprecated classes

Due to the API changes to Away3D 4.0 Beta mentioned above and elsewhere, some degree of code refactoring will be required to upgrade an existing project. While we hope these will appear as minor, please bear that in mind if you are considering switching mid-project. To help with some of the changes, we have retained the old class structures but using them will throw a deprecation error with details of how to re-factor using the latest classes.

The new release is intended as a consolidation of various loose ends and unoptimised areas and as such has no outright new features, but it is out recommendation to upgrade whenever possible in order to take advantage of the streamlined APIs and optimised operation.

An update to the livedocs will be arriving shortly, in the meantime you can grab the latest 4.0 beta build by going to the away3d-core-fp11 repository on github, and download all the existing Away3D source examples updated for the beta changes at away3d-examples-fp11. Alternatively, head over to our downloads page for zipped sources of both repositories.


We hope you like the new release and welcome any feedback.


The Away3D Team


********* update *********

Our googlecode svn has now had its source repository updated for any of you who prefer using svn over git - sadly, due to git's terrible svn integration we won't be able to issue regular code updates here, but we will continue to post all major releases:

library is located at http://away3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fp11/Away3D/
examples can be found here http://away3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fp11/Examples/Away3D/as/

Finally, we also have a selection of update compiled demos that now run in 4.0.0 beta, links are pasted below. For each demo, you can view and download the source by right clicking anywhere in the view and selecting "View Source". You will also notice a version indicator in the right-click menu for debugging purposes - we will be updating revisions regularly so if you like to live on the bleeding edge, you should always be able to identify which version you are currently working with.

Enjoy!



]]> tag:away3d.com,2012:/download/4.696 2012-02-17T11:46:10Z 2012-02-17T08:24:12Z Rob Bateman http://www.infiniteturtles.co.uk tag:away3d.com,2012:/showcase/2.694 2012-02-17T11:36:54Z 2012-02-17T16:43:56Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2012:/showcase/2.693 2012-02-16T08:23:30Z 2012-02-20T18:54:31Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2012:/showcase/2.691 2012-02-08T09:33:56Z 2012-02-08T03:50:58Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2012:/showcase/2.690 2012-02-08T09:25:06Z 2012-02-08T03:33:07Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2011:/comments/1.689 2011-12-21T07:26:29Z 2011-12-21T06:46:31Z Richard Olsson http://www.richardolsson.se this blog post. We have not been able to reach these milestones yet, but that of course does not mean that work has stopped or that Away3D is going away.

The delay is largely as a result of our desire to create a high-quality, professional-grade library with Away3D 4.0. We are committed to providing a stable, flexible and well-documented API for the final release, and with some refactor work still in the pipeline, we have found it simply unrealistic to keep to our original timescales unless we were willing to compromise the scope of delivery in some way.

At present, API changes are being worked through and we would encourage anyone interested in these changes to take a look at "dev" branch on GitHub for the latest test builds. Much progress has been made here already, and there are even a few new features sneaking in which we'll be talking more about in a separate blog post. The revised roadmap plan expects completion of these refactors to fall around mid to late January, at which point Away3D 4.0 will officially reach beta. At this point we will switch to concentrating on bugfixing and minor refinements, adding the polish necessary to finalise our official Away3D 4.0 release version.

As a side note, we are aware of the current concern surrounding the future of one of our newer libraries Away Physics that uses Adobe Alchemy. Some of you may have heard that Alchemy is due an upgrade, although the precise nature of this upgrade is yet to be revealed. We are actively involved in discussions with Adobe over their direction with Alchemy, and hope to be able to bring you information in the near future on what this will mean for Away Physics. The prospect of technical improvements in this area is certainly one of great excitement for us, and the precise nature of the licensing model (which for many is the source of concern) is something Adobe are keen to make work for open source communities such as ours. Watch this space for updates on the discussion.

It is important to note that although Away3D 4.0 is technically still in alpha, a lot of people have already used it to create seriously stunning content. Take a look at our showcase gallery for some of the recent projects around the web that have been using Away3D 4.0 to achieve visuals of a quality and speed never before seen in Flash. If anyone is planning to publish an Away3D project, we encourage you to fill out a showcase form for future inclusion in our showcase section.

Thank you for all contributions, discussions, demos and sites submitted by the community in the last few months, and happy holidays to all Away3D users around the world!

The Away3D Team ]]> tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.684 2011-12-13T13:45:25Z 2011-12-13T07:55:26Z Rob Bateman http://www.infiniteturtles.co.uk tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.688 2011-12-13T13:39:11Z 2011-12-13T07:44:12Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.687 2011-12-13T12:29:00Z 2011-12-13T07:01:02Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.686 2011-12-12T15:15:14Z 2011-12-13T08:20:15Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.685 2011-12-12T15:04:03Z 2011-12-12T09:39:04Z Jens Chr Brynildsen http://www.flashgamer.com tag:away3d.com,2011:/showcase/2.683 2011-10-20T12:02:30Z 2011-10-23T16:45:32Z Rob Bateman http://www.infiniteturtles.co.uk tag:away3d.com,2011:/comments/1.680 2011-10-12T12:06:55Z 2011-10-12T07:12:57Z Richard Olsson http://www.richardolsson.se this epic games article to find out more on the Flash 11 publishing options coming to UDK) and, of course, the official release of Flash Player 11, all of which you can watch on Adobe TV's recording of the day 2 keynote.



Having fully recovered from the festivities, there are a few announcements to be made concerning our own release roadmap. The first concerns our release plans for Away3D 4.0 and Away Physics. Above is a slide that we ran out of time to show in our MAX presentation, announcing december this year as the release date of Away3D 4.0, with a beta release in November. The work leading up to the beta release will finalise library features and front facing code structures. API changes will be kept to an absolute minimum during the beta cycle the following month leading up to our final production release of 4.0 at the end of the year.

This means that the next few weeks will see some much needed library updates, while the time after November will be used to focus on tidying up our documentation, making final API tweaks and fixing all the bugs that our community has so graciously been filing in our GitHub issue tracker. Please keep doing so if you find any issues with the current alpha version!

The result of all this means that over the next two months, you should expect to see a feature complete, stable API version of Away3D 4.0 emerging. At the same time, will be aiming to match these milestones with those of our open specification, compact binary file format AWD. By the end of this year we're likely to see AWD2 ready for general release, with feature complete exporters for Maya 2010, 2011 and 2012, as well as Blender 2.59 and above.

After these releases and into early next year, we will be continuing development for Away3D 4.1, for which we will announce a release schedule at a later time. In parallel, we will be working on finalising the AwayPhysics 1.0 library release that offers integrated 3D physics interactions with Away3D. We are also beginning development on a brand new library that was announced at Max called Away Game Tools, more of which will be detailed in a forthcoming blog post.

We hope you are as excited as we are to be nearing a stable Away3D 4.0 release. Please help us by continuing to file issue reports on Github that keep us aware of the existing problems and bugs being encountered. Also, if you are requiring urgent assistance regarding bugs or features in a project that you or your company are planning to release in the interim, don't forget that our production and consultancy group Away Media offers services for projects working to tight deadlines. And if you didn't make it to Max this year, you can watch the recording of our shared Flare3D / Away3D session on Adobe TV: Flash and 3D: Start your engines!

The Away3D Team ]]> tag:away3d.com,2011:/comments/1.679 2011-09-21T14:29:57Z 2011-10-21T10:06:59Z Rob Bateman http://www.infiniteturtles.co.uk Flash on the Beach conference in Brighton. Away Sky Racer was created by the French-based Away3D contributor Lo Chamans, using Away3D 4.0 and Away Physics. Controls are WASD or cursor keys, mouse to look around, O to swap control between character and car and C to open controler panel. We'd be especially interested in any feedback on performance as this will continue to be tweaked and optimised as the library code matures. ]]>