Flash on the beach is just around the corner, and this year I’ll be heading down to Brighton as a speaker, something I’m fairly chuffed about. To me, FOTB is the jewel in the crown of European creative conferences and an event i feel truly honoured to be a part of.

As an added bonus, I get the chance to stretch the legs of a brand new talk entitled Flash 11: get ready for gametime. The subject on discussion should be fairly obvious, but I’m hoping the content will hold a few surprises, in particular towards people who’s main games background has so far been exclusively in Flash, such as myself. Although I’m pretty sure i won’t be surprised by it, unless i get someone else to write it for me…

I’m told there is only a week of standard ticket sales left, so if you’re still considering going along but don’t want to pay full walk-up price, time is running out! The main presentation I’ll be giving will be pretty much for everyone, although I will also be preparing a little something extra in an Influxis kickback lounge short session, for those who want to get a bit more techy. You know who you are, you geeky freaks

see you at the bar!

Next week both myself and Richard Olsson from the Away3D team will be heading to New York to speak at the second annual Flash and the City conference. While its great to catch up with old friends, it’ll also be a chance to meet some news ones as New York is a place neither Richard or I have spoken at before. We’ll actually be doing separate talks – I’ll be presenting my Simulating the Real piece and Richard will be covering more practical aspects of the new Away3D tools being built for 4.0 with a talk entitled Flash – will it Blend?

FATC is yet another Flash conference that covers a range of subjects beyond simply the Flash variety, and there is a strong speaker lineup including Lee Brimelow, Ryan Stewart, Keith Peters, John Lindquist, Ben Stucki, Bartek Drozdz and Stacey Mulcahy to name but a few. I haven’t been back to New York in a while so it’s certainly an exciting prospect for me – looking forward to seeing you all! The most up-to-date information on the conference can be found by following the FATC blog at http://blog.flashandthecity.com/2011.

Being a little slow of the mark with my promotion this time around (apologies Shawn!) i thought it would be a good idea to do something of a write-up for the recent FITC Toronto conference by way of compensation. As this was my second time presenting Simulating the Real, i actually had a chance to see some of the other presentations and take in a bit of conference atmosphere in place of the usual mad rush to finish slides.

The conference venue itself was a divvied-up nightclub with a rabbit-warren of corridors and rooms and some fairly impressive looking murals & decor on the walls. It did feel quite cocooned from the outside world, which was no bad thing considering the outside world for the duration of the conference decided to do a very good impression of a typical British summer. The slightly gaudy surroundings if anything added to the feeling of detachment, and once inside the WiFi did its bit to assist with a sporadic connection speed. But in many ways this didn’t really matter, and I was more than cheered up by the goodies we got on arrival which included a selection of sweets you could actually eat! I can’t remember the last time I had a candy necklace…

As a kick-off to the event, we were treated to the now legendary MK12 opening titles sequence, which used a 50′s drive-in theater style to get across some kind of unholy underlying pop-corn themed blood-lust. Well that was my interpretation anyway – make you own judgment below.

(note to vimeo – stop making your movie player so hard to embed in wordpress blogs!)

The first presentation i saw was Veronique Brossier’s Video Tapestry – the application of which i had first witnessed at Adobe Max last year. It focuses on the idea that a video timeline control can take on key images of the points in the film they represent, and i really hope we end up seeing this in some sort of Adobe component in future as the resulting application provides a much more intuitive navigation method than traditional controls. Rather than sticking to a standard film-strip of screenshots, the tapestry approach allows blending between images to create a seamless transition between scenes, adding to the overall appeal. Another trick is to allow for realtime temporal zooming, which looks frankly amazing the first time you see it. Veronique is author of the recently published book Developing Android Applications with Adobe AIR, and the finale in her talk was a demonstration of the video tapestry application running seamlessly in AIR on a Samsung Galaxy Tab. You can view more on the Video Tapestry effect by watching this Adobe Labs Video that summarises the key ingredients of the technology.

Next was the Adobe Keynote, which this year has been uploaded to Adobe TV and can be veiwed in its entirety here. Things kicked off with David Wadhwani talking about Flash’s past & present covering fairly run-of-the-mill ground (ie. Flash has gone from animation tool to Enterprise runtime application etc etc). All the usual culprits such as video and games-based Flash applications were present, but it felt that at least some of the more wild claims were for effect more than accuracy (I think the quote “Flash has inspired web standards” is a little overstepping the mark frankly!) and possibly only done to dig one in the ribs of HTML5 advocates. While it is no doubt that Flash has been a trailblazer in many areas of the web, Adobe could potentially do with a more introspective look at Flash’s past glories… but what do i know.

After some cool hardware-accelerated demos showing Flash video playing seamlessly in 1080p first on the desktop and then on a Blackberry Playbook hooked up to a Hi-def TV (!), David then handed over to Richard Galvan with some new features in Flash Pro for publishing to mobile, Deepa Subramaniam with some suspiciously FDT-looking new features in Flash Builder (templates, anyone?), and finally Lee Brimelow talking about Molehill. Of course, i have to mention the 3D demo that Lee showcased (after declaring Away3D “A solid 3D engine with an easy to learn API” – Thanx Lee!) – the molehill-enabled game Delta Strike courtesy of our friends at Pro3games, running with the latest Away3D 4.0 alpha codebase. If you have the incubator build of Flash 11 installed on your machine, you can check out the demo for yourself here.

The following day, my presentation was unfortunately the main distraction of the morning, complemented by some hurried last minute changes to get a selection of fur demos into the talk after seeing the state of the walls in my room. These were a recent set of experiments produced by one of our core team members Greg Caldwell, and you can find an online preview here. The effects shown was first pioneered by a PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus, and it is interesting to think that soon over 90% of web users will have a PS2-like 3D engine at their disposal, courtesy of the Flash 11 Molehill API. I will be posting an online version of my presentation slides hopefully within the next week for anyone who is interested in actually following the Shallow Water Equation walkthrough to its conclusion – its not for everyone and i feel now that if I’d honestly given it the time it deserved we’d have all been there for another hour! At least the ridiculously complex-looking final equation got a laugh, even if i didn’t complete what I’d set out to do.

As a nice way to wind down after a frenetic morning, I got a chance to catch Tali Krakowsky and Branden Hall’s Bloom talk, which fittingly featured a series of hippy-trippy animated mural installations. Branden seems to make a habit of creating design tools with which animators and artists can create beautiful interactive pieces, and the Bloom project appeared to be no different – aside from the setting, which in this case turned out to be huge billboards in LA Plaza. From that to the contrastingly sterile world of lightcycles and blue skintight suits, TRON GFX by Bradley Munkowitz provided an incredible insight into the process behind film effects production. I have to say I’m a sucker for any kind of ‘behind the scenes’ retrospective of a film, but there were some great moments in Bradley’s pres that provided more than just a glimpse of the creative thought process behind certain scenes – in particular the ‘ISO brain-surgery’ scene where Jeff Bridges does his obligatory stoner impression.

The final day started a little slow for me as i had some catching up to do at work, but I managed to make it down to see Lee Brimelow’s Don’t Hate the Player – a snapshot of what is currently being done across platforms with the Flash Player, and where things are going. There are some truly exciting times ahead with the whole approach Adobe is taking to multiscreening, and i sincerely hope they continue down this path as one of the most positive outcomes we can expect for the Flash Platform in the short term is in its cross-platform gaming potential. Lee demoed several nicely done Flash games on Android and iOS platforms, as well as yet another Away3D demo – this time the preview from the Jiglibflash team of their implementation of the Bullet physics engine in Molehill. Expect to hear more on that in the coming weeks…

I also got a chance to drop in on Seb’s What the Flux talk, in which he goes through the various reasons why Flash hasn’t always had the best press in the web world, and how the anti-Flash brigade have some valid points on how the web is evolving. Its a difficult subject to get across, certainly, but Seb’s dry-witted performance gives the whole thing an energy beyond its subject matter, while keeping to the main points of the talk – a general consensus that Flash is not the last word in web development! The pre-recorded interviews were especially great (although Jer Thorp looked like he was wrapped inside a bin liner for some reason) and the ‘Flashy Fortunes’ gameshow played out halfway through the session is an inspired piece – one that gets the relevant information across in a truly engaging way. I think if Seb ever gets tired of the world of web, he has another career as a gameshow host waiting in the wings…

Overall, the FITC hometown experience was a pretty interesting affair  – a huge crowd of eager creatives and a collection of great speakers made it pretty special, and it was great to see everyone involved once more. Cheers to Shawn and Lisa for the show & hospitality, cheers to Adobe for buying us Gyros (with chips!), cheers to the other speakers for being awesome, and cheers to the attendees for making me feel so welcome! Reboot next year

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later, but i think most of us weren’t necessarily expecting it to happen today!

Earlier today at the Flash Gaming Summit keynote, Adobe announced its incubator program for the current Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 builds, which gives public access to the new features of Flash 11 as they are developed, including the current state of the GPU-accelerated Molehill APIs. After the announcement, Away3D 4.0 Alpha (codename Broomstick) was released on away3d.com, with all code and examples uploaded to the Away3D googlecode svn and mirrored source repositories appearing on Github. The Away3D Team have been  working very hard to get to this point, and all credit must go to them for the incredible job already done on the engine.

The above video shows one of the code demos (ShallowWaterDemo) published in the example sources in action. In order to compile and run these sources you will need to follow the instructions on setting up your development environment on the Adobe Labs Wiki for the Flash Player Incubator release. You can see this and a variety of other demos running live over at http://away3d.com/away3d-4-0-alpha-release-broomstick.

It is important to stress that at this point, both the Flash Player Incubator release and Away3D 4.0 framework are in an alpha state and are therefore only to be used for prototyping and demonstration purposes. However, with the Incubator program, Adobe have opened the door wide for user testing and feedback on the planned features of the next Flash Player, which should ultimately lead to a better developed, more stable release. So cheers go to Thibault Imbert and everyone involved in the Incubator program at Adobe!

More updates on Away3D 4.0 will follow on away3d.com and the Away3D google group in the coming weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out for new demos & resources.

Picture: Higgs boson simulation, Cern (Mette Høst)

At the beginning of March I will be heading over to Amsterdam to attend the FITC conference, the annual excuse for designers & developers to get together in one of the coolest cities in Europe for two days of inspiration the dutch way… and I’m very happy to be presenting a brand new talk surrounding the programmatic approaches and practical implications of computer simulations entitled Simulating the Real. The talk is aimed at a broad audience so don’t be afraid to come along if you’re a non-programmer; a degree in particle physics is not required!   As a point of relevance, I will also be looking at how the GPU accelerated Molehill APIs announced at last year’s Adobe Max conference will affect the capabilities of the Flash Player in the area of simulation, with the help of the latest Away3D codebase.

The FITC organisers have kindly created a special discount code for any members of the Away3D community – simply type “Away3D” into the discount code box on the registration page to receive a massive 10% discount on any conference pass! Hope to see you there.

2010 has been a year of collaboration for us, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have been involved in or encouraged Away3D development in some way, including JiglibFlash, EvoFlash, Influxis, Adobe, Prefab3D, Friends of ED, HaXe, the Away3D community and of course, the Away3D Team. Have a great Christmas & New Year everyone!

If you haven’t heard the news, the next major Flash Player upgrade from Adobe will include an extensive 3D API that will support direct paths to OpenGL and DirectX-based 3D rendering on the GPU, as well as a new software 3D renderer fallback that will aim to provide the vast majority of computers with fast, reliable, 3D rendering in Flash. Armed with “Molehill” (the codename for these new 3D APIs) performance is set to increase to around 1000 times what can be squeezed out of the current Flash Player. Flash game makers, designers, and developers will finally have the option to use console-quality 3D graphics in their 3D Flash creations.

A large number of the Away3D Team have been working closely with Adobe to create an easy upgrade path for the Away3D engine, providing the same easy to use Away3D framework at a high level, but plugging directly into the exposed hardware APIs at a low level. A recording of our Max session New 3D features for Flash (which was jointly shared by myself & Richard Olsson, alongside fellow 3D coder Anton Volkov from Alternativa) can be found at http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2010-develop/new-3d-features-for-flash/ or by clicking the link below.

The presentation shows some amazing demos running realtime accelerated 3D from inside the Flash Player, with the help of our 4.0 prerelease build. The public beta of the new Flash Player is planned for release in the first half of 2011, and will be complemented by a public release of the Away3D 4.0 engine, enabling the Away3D community to start developing faster, smoother and less processor-hungry 3D Flash content as soon as the capabilities are available.

I’m also pleased to announce that we have been offered an opportunity to present content from our Away3D Max session at the upcoming AUG XL conference in Amsterdam on November 17th. This time I will be joined on stage by another key Away3D developer in the new engine upgrade – the extremely hardworking & talented David Lenaerts.

If you can’t wait for the pres (or the public beta) to get a glimpse of the 3D possibilities unfolding, be sure to check out the high-quality videos below of two current Away3D 4.0 demos.

Myself and the Away3D team are currently beavering away on the final preparations for our presentation at Max – this will be without a doubt one of the biggest events of the year and we feel extremely privileged to be a part of it. If you are interested in what the future holds for Away3D and are lucky enough to be attending the Adobe Max conference yourself, then be sure to sign up for our session: New 3D features for Flash. The talk will not exclusively pertain to the Away3D engine – we will be sharing our slot with 3D Flash veterans and general all round smashing chaps from Alternativa, so there will certainly be a lot to pack in! Seats for the session sold out early last week, but I’m told that room capacity has since been increased so more seats are now available. My advice would be to get them while you still can – you will not want to miss this show…

A little too vague? Maybe. But seriously, you won’t want to miss it. trust me.

**********Update**********

I’ve also been told that i will have an opportunity to show some of the more esoteric uses of Away3D at this year’s FITC Unconference. This is a collection of exclusive sessions from the FITC crowd, bundled into a special room at Adobe Max. Each slot is a 30 minute mini-session that can be a little more relaxed and participatory than the usual Max circus, aided by free beer supplied by the generous peeps at Litl.com. My session is titled The evolving Away3D platform – hope you can make it!

The announcement of the new release appeared alongside a new Away3D demo called BattleCell, the result of a recent collaboration with Influxis which uses both the extra power of the new engine and the peer-to-peer capabilities of Flash 10.1 to produce a realtime 3D multiplayer prototype. Special thanks must go to Influxis dev Sean McCracken, as well as Away3D coders David Lenaerts and Fabrice Closier, and 3D designer Federico Selmi for their hard work on the project.

The demo uses a newly developed API for multiplayer games over RTMFP (the new P2P protocol available to Flash 10.1 users). What this allows is many live data connections directly between clients with little to no latency, creating the perfect environment for some serious fragging fun! BattleCell is the name given to both the demo and the underlying AS3 API, the latter written by Sean in order to easily connect multiple users and pass data between clients.

The BattleCell demo is a typical FPS Deathmatch-style game, complete with room allocation, choice of weapons and a large play area for you to roam. Obstacles in the game include lifts, teleport windows, acid baths and secret tunnels to assist your attacks… but be careful who is lurking round the corner!

The new 3.6.0 version of Away3D has a completely remodeled core to take full advantage of all native 3D APIs in Flash 10, which results in more stable and less memory-hungry apps. Performance has improved also, and we expect framerates to increase still further as we continue to optimise the new framework. There have been some older class replacements that you need to be aware of when upgrading: both custom classes MatrixAway3D and Number3D have been replaced by the native Matrix3D and Vector3D classes respectively for added speed and stability.

The Battlecell demo is kindly hosted by Influxis and can be accessed online at http://www.influxis.com/battlecell. Type in a room name for your friends to join, and a user name so that others can identify you in-game. The game URL can easily be copy-pasted for fast access to a room, and any user leaving the game automatically frees-up their slot for a new user to join. As the APIs are still being tested, a maximum of 4 users can join a single room at once, but we hope to increase this limit in future versions of the demo.

As usual, all updates can be downloaded from the googlecode svn, or from the downloads section of away3d.com.  For those of you just interested in upgrading your FP10 library without having to worry about existing code breaking, there is a specially tagged 3.5.2 version of the code that includes all enhancements up to the point where external API adjustments are made. This version is recommended for developers in the middle of a project, who don’t want the hassle of changing their code. A full breakdown of the API changes for 3.6.0 will be posted on the Away3D mailing list in the next few days.

Expanding areas of the visualiser under the mouse allows them to be viewed in more detail. Each match is split into sets (concentric circles), games (collections of line segments) and points (individual segments). Players are represented by different colours, with each point segment taking the winning player’s colour. The length of each segment is representative of the length of the rally for that point, and serve speed is represented by the height of the segment.

A Key along the bottom of the visualiser doubles as a filtering option. Each representation can be clicked on to highlight the areas of the visualisation that contain those events. This allows a user to instantly focus on individual aspects of a game, such as the progression of converted breakpoints, where in a match double faults occur, and who benefits most from unforced errors. Further detail is available for each point in the game by clicking on the relevant segment, with the information displayed in the center of the visualiser.

At all levels of the application, the central momentum meter displays an overall swing of player success, calculated algorithmically from match data. If a player is particularly on top of their game, dropping less unforced errors, holding their service games etc, the momentum meter will display a larger portion of their colour in the central circular graph. This acts as a quick indicator of how the match is progressing for the players.

As matches are completed, they are added to the Pointstream database and can be re-visited at any time. The data view for a completed match retains all information that is available in the live data view, although obviously the outcome is already known! A completed visualisation is unique to the match it represents, and goes some way to demonstrate how data can be at the same time both interesting and informative to look at.

The application will be producing live data all through the US Open up to the finals on the 12th of September, so if you are following the tournament, be sure to check it out!

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