as away3d 4 doesnt support text, interactive and animated materials, would 3.6 be the better choice for interactive websites?

On 3.6 you loose gpu acceleration. I personally think sth like three.js would be a better solution for websites if you want to make it simple and performance is not a priority for you.

_kihu, so you say even if I run my adobe air app with away3d with gpumode=direct or gpumode=gpu , away3d will NOT use GPU acceleration?

Well, it will use gpu to compose the final image on the screen, but it will be significantly slower than Stage3D.

A nice article on this:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2008/05/what-does-gpu-acceleration-mean.html

gpu: This is fully fledged compositing (+some extras) using some functionality of the graphics card. Think of it being similar to what OSX and Vista do for their desktop managers, the content of windows (in flash language that means movie clips) is still rendered using software, but the result is composited using hardware.

Just because the Flash Player is using the video card for rendering does not mean it will be faster. In the majority of cases your content will become slower.

So I were to run Starling along Away3d 3.x it’d be running even slower?

Starling uses Stage3D, which is fully rendered with GPU. Away3D 3.6 is rendered with CPU and then the image is sent to GPU. In this scenario Away3D 3.6 would be rendered slower.

So Starling+Away3D 3.x will be slower than Starling+Away3D 4.x if this is what you’re asking about.

However, I’ve never seen Starling+Away3D 3.x working together, so I might be wrong! I’m just assuming from theory:)

For my usecase I’m requiring Away3d 3.6 because of BezierPatch class from primitives package which seem to be absent from 4.x. Maybe it’s just been moved to another package?

BezierPatch is not ported to 4.0 yet.

Regarding 3.6 and starling. Aside performance aspect, as 3.6 uses the displaylist and Starling the Stage3D layer. You could combine both, but Starling would not be rendered on top of your away layer.