Flash Player to harness hardware acceletarion

Soon, Flash Player is going to start making use of GPUs power for video and graphics acceleration. This is a feature that the Flash 3D community is clamoring for quite some time now. Nobody is saying how soon though, maybe on the next version of the player? I hope so.

This expands the currently available hardware acceleration in the FP which I believe is geared for scaling, particularly in fullscreen mode.



Here is an nVidia press release that announces the collaboration. This makes me think though, what happens if I have an ATI Video Board? Are we going to start recognizing hardware now as we routinelly do with browsers?

Here's an answer to this question with the currently available FP hardware acceleration from Adobe so that we can get a hold of the complexity that this could bring to the table:

Will hardware-accelerated scaling work on all computers?

For hardware-accelerated scaling to work, you need Microsoft® DirectX 9 with VRAM 128 MB for Windows and OpenGL for Apple® Macintosh®, OS X v10.2 or higher. There might be compatibility issues with older hardware and drivers. (See Flash Player system requirements.) With older versions of Flash Player, you should not see dramatic changes as the player reverts from hardware-accelerated scaling back to software scaling.

Flash Builder 4 Beta - First Impressions

I've installed the beta and here are the first things that stood out for me which look very promising:

• Imported Flex Builder 3 with no problems, it let me know that the project being imported was created under an older version of the Flex Framework and offered the option to select which one I wanted to utilize for it in Flash Builder.
• It also listed the Path Variables that needed to be setup.
  
  
  
• UI Glitches are gone. Many (including me) have complained of disappearing UI elements in Flex Builder 3, in my case I always have problems under Project/Preferences screen.
  
• I was pleased to see that under the project source folder (src by default) there is now a Package node, which is clearer instead of showing (or not showing in the case of default packages) subfolders.
  
  
  
  
• There is also a new node on the Package Explorer for Referenced Libraries which holds all imported SWCs.
  
  
  More to come as I continue to use it!
  
  

Adobe Flash Builder 4 Beta now available (Formerly Flex Builder)

Adobe announced the release of Flash Builder 4 which was previously known as Flex Builder 3. As they say in their posting in Adobe Labs, the shift in name has to do with the differentiation between the open source free Flex Framework and the commercially available developing product suite. Also, dropping in the F brand into the name of this awesome product is definitely going to attract more flash developers who might have been reluctant to pick it up until now.

A video of the new features can be found here.

The 30 free beta is available here.

I am downloading it now, so I haven't tested it yet but I am excited with the improvement of the workflow as it has to do with working with flash graphic assets, which anyone doing pure Actionscript Projects will attest to, it desperately needed simplification.

My Latest iStockPhoto addition

The goblins at iStockphoto.com just approved my newest addition.

Check it out, it's a dusk photo of the Miami Skyline taken from the Rickenbacker causeway coming from Key Biscayne.




The truck lights where a little bit of a lucky shot. I had the tripod setup and my Nikon D200 setup on a 2 second release timer. So I heard something big coming behind me, closed my eyes and released the shutter. The camera started counting and it released just at the perfect time. Couldn't have done it if tried timing it manually.

Thank you Goblins!