Howdy,

There has been a lot of discussion in my office lately of needing to shift to learning and using HTML5 instead of AS3 and Flash because of the sense that Flash is going away forever and that AS3 will become a low level skill in the not to distant future.

I personally have my reservations. But the question thats most important to me - since I’ve spent the last 8 months learning Away3D to begin integrating 3D content into our user inferfaces - is how does all of this (namely Adobe dropping support of Flash in favor of HTML5) affect Away3D? I know there is AIR, but if my office makes the switch to HTML5 are there any in between options to continue using Away3D?

Many thanks,
Dave

hi

i have been asking this myself for a while now, but the latest news (adobe officially supporting away3d) convinced me again that i am learning the right stuff. i love as3 and i hope it wont die.

flash is changing.
its not only about the browserstuff anymore. its getting powerfull enough to build applications far beyond the scope of banners/websides. if html5 will be the better solution for banners/websides so be it.

for (mobile) apps and games, as3 seams to have a bright future.

(?)

If your studio is taking about “making a switch to HTML5” I think their mindset is seriously flawed. In some cases HTML5 open web technologies are better, and in some cases Flash technologies are better. It has been like that for years and years, and will continue to be like that. To just stop doing one in favor of completely “switching” to the other is just a silly approach.

Having said that, I’ll try to answer your question.

Away3D only exists for Flash, so if Flash was to hypothetically go away you would not be able to use it in any other technology. However, I have absolutely no reason to believe that Flash will be going away in the next several years. Adobe is investing heavily in the desktop browser player and in AIR for mobile, and there are several game studios and other companies that are still conducting large-scale, long-term development for the platform. There are some things that simply can’t be done as reliably and with as much reach in the open web technologies as it can with Flash, and real-time 3D is one of those things. WebGL will probably never come to Internet Explorer, so even if it continues to grow at the current pace it will never reach the kind of market penetration that Flash has.

Besides, if you have spent 8 months learning Away3D, you have most likely been learning a lot more than just the Away3D API, such as general 3D concepts, approaches and solutions. Those apply to any 3D technology. So if you were to switch to building native mobile apps, or using WebGL and javascript, a lot of your newfound knowledge would translate.

And there is nothing saying that there will never be an Away3D for other languages. We tried once with HaXe, but never got the sort of traction that motivated continued development. Maybe we’ll try again with some other language at some point, and if the demand is there, development will likely continue in parallel with the standard Flash version of Away3D.

Thanks for the prompt reply Richard.

I too don’t believe Flash is going away either, especially when i see developments like the Away Foundation. It proves to me that Flash still is very much relevant in the web and really in the lead with live 3D content. The problem is convincing the guys in the office that…

Over the next couple months I’m going to spend some time trying out the project I’m currently working on with three.js. I’m suspecting I won’t get the same performance as I am currently with Away3d4 and Stage 3D. This is the only way in my mind to convince the guys in the office that Flash isn’t dead.

Anyway, thanks again for the great work you guys are doing and prompt feedback.

-Dave

I do a lot cool things with Flash and I would be glad to do it with javascript and WebGL. But my clients want something that everybody is going to be able to use. And for some reason which no one will ever be able to explain there is an enormous amount of people still using IE 8 and below. So until we either eradicate that IE population or figure out a way to do these things on those browsers, Flash, in a lot of cases is still the best option. The 3d stuff I am doing isn’t just for decoration.  It is giving people real live information that without that 3d they couldn’t have this knowledge.

@David: Don’t be so sure about performance. WebGL uses the exact same underlying APIs that Stage3D do, and actually allows access to more of it which allows WebGL programmers to sometimes optimize their use of the APIs even further. So whether Flash 3D is faster than WebGL depends on a lot of varying circumstances, like environment (browser, operating system) as well as the way you’ve programmed it, and whether the main bottleneck of your application is rendering or client (your) code.

The main reason to choose Flash should rather be the reach and market penetration of the player, and the main reason to choose Away3D should be the features.