Comments on: Director 11 Is Released

By: mrsteel

mrsteel — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:57:13 +0000

new director is great stuff,
people that are eager to do amazing stuff doesn’t have to wait Flash to get this new things
why not use Director
downloadable runtime is only 4mb like Silverlight and it’s much more powerfull

I would like community and Adobe put more into education on Javascript ( and Lingo) for Director
learning resources was and still are very low for Director

By: drawk

drawk — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:37:56 +0000

Yeh PJM,

The plan for that system and market wasn’t too good. It still drives many 3d games online but not sure why they left is stuck in 2002-2003. It is still one of the most common installed plugins for browser 3d. It wasn’t very powerful due to computers at the time (lots of low end) but it is perfect for now where most computers have at least a 16 or 32 mb card now. Better ways are emerging, might be too late.

By: PJM

PJM — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:44:43 +0000

I read a similar debate somewhere on one of the Director dedicated web sites in 2002, right after real-time 3D was introduced to Director. My opinion back then was: make Director a 3D game oriented engine for online and even offline delivery, and keep Flash 2D only and expend its capabilities towards video. Interestingly enough Flash went in the direction of a true multimedia development platform, capitalizing on its flash player popularity. Unfortunately, Director since version 8.5 has not received much attention for some strange reasons. Well, maybe not strange, unless you call lack of vision on the part of Macromedia and Adobe “strange”. Adobe at least is trying to make some moves with Director 11, but their current release is simply not enough. It would be nice to hear a little bid more from Adobe about what their plans are for Director, because there are some interesting platforms out there that fill in the market gap for web 3D, like: Quest 3D or Anark Studio for example – both not perfect, but their focus is on real-time 3D and they bring some great ideas for multimedia development in 3D to the table.

In my opinion Director should focus on real-time 3D development for multimedia and game development, instead of being the “jack of all trades” type of tool – let the Flash do the rest, it’s definitely capable of it.

By: drawk

drawk — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:18:18 +0000

I know I know…. they direly need to open up this IDE and allow like a DirectorDevelop or someway to allow the IDE to be expanded. I hate coding in little windows… Same with Flash IDE.

By: duncancarroll

duncancarroll — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:15:30 +0000

Just loaded the demo, and two things are pissing me off right off the bat:

- Still just one level of undo… I can’t believe they didn’t add more levels… it’s such a disgrace…

- File windows are still “trapped” inside the main Director window.

By: drawk

drawk — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:02:27 +0000

I think that flash is a base level support for graphics. This means soon they will have to offload some processing on hardware I believe and they show that with AIF and Hydra. But they could also instead of that add a subset of OpenGL that would allow common shaders. Also, it is not all about 3d but performance. Video will improve, motion will improve, the amount of operations you can run, methods, variables, loops etc will all be improved especially with pixel operations. I think that they could add it in a way that would be still representative of lower end graphics for the widest support. They are introducing the beast with AIF and hardware support so why not OpenGL instead and a common shader library? I agree Flash should not be the fridge, Director should get respect as a higher level gaming platform (hardware rendering – low bar with LOD). But flash could greatly benefit especially in speeding up pixel operations, application performance, and nearly every interactive use for flash for marketing. But they do need to keep in mind to keep it the low-end. I Think by now most computers have a 16 or 32 MB video card. Why not take advantage. The limits are hit quickly with software rendering. Also offloading some of that will allow more processor for your application while rendering would offload = better performing apps.

By: Dachev

Dachev — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:31:40 +0000

@Archont: Mate your priorities are misconceptual.
My web development is overreliant on flash, thus I need max penetration rates of flash plus a very stable and predictable behaviour of the plugin (and now the air runtime). While spreading calculations on the gpu is a very good thing, integrating PhysiX or Havoc clearly isn’t. Same for gpu-accelerated vector rendering – great idea, a must. Burdening the flash player with directx … not really.
Look at adobe air. Whilst hardware 3d will open a lot of ground for web to desktop gaming, a home banking app will suffer from an increased bug margin and greater memory consumption thanks to the increased complexity of the player and external code running along with it.
The question is … what do you want flash for? Gaming? Is it really flash you need? Or is it the only thing you can do? Buy a mac and go for unity. I dont need a &%@ refrigerator in flash mate.

By: archont

archont — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:37:27 +0000

What if Flash would integrate the speed of director, it’s hardware support?

We’d have a new era in online gaming.

“Seriously, I think we should close the openGL, directX, and all hardware-accelerated-3d-in-flash discussions, because they really detract from the one coolest and most respectful thing about flash – it runs everywhere needing just the player.”

What rock has this chap been living under? Go play some games on newgrounds. You’ll quickly realize the more advanced games – and flash games ARE getting more and more advanced, not the other way – won’t run on your low-end machine well enough, because you need a beast of a CPU. Now, if Adobe introduced hardware support, you wouldn’t be forced to choose to either download the game locally and run it on low quality OR buy and overclock a Penryn – because your good old geforce 2 and athlon combined will both be working and will have the power to render a scene that would otherwise require an overclocker-price-segment CPU. Even simple 3d games in Flash that would make even an integrated laptop chip yawn are currently taxing the CPU to it’s limits.

By: drawk

drawk — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:52:39 +0000

@Dachev: Yes by my aim is for a better, solid game market online. I want online games to be more low bar for lots of creativity. Right now flash 3d is so tantalizing and so close, but yet so far with software rendering. I agree Director never was as much as a platform (only 50% penetration compared to flash 98%) and that was largely due to crashes from plugins and xtras. BUT, Adobe might not have a choice if Silverlight adds some hardware rendering. Hydra and AIF use hardware rendering…The people want it not just for 3d but for shaders, faster guis, better pixel manipulation and many other things.

@Des Yeh I as happy they released and it is not dead but it barely has any life. I mean they didn’t even market the release that much. They have no plans it seems. They didn’t even update 3d in any way. I am big on the PhysX engine but they only did that because Havok was too expensive at the time (since director 10-10.5 – although havok is going open source). Unicode and better text is nice and needed but overall it looks liek they may have stuck a fork in it.

By: Des

Des — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:56:04 +0000

Yeah… I’ve been working with Director on an off since MX released. This update is a letdown overall. Was hoping they’d redesign and rethink the whole Director framework the same way Actionscript was made developer friendly from v2->v3. I’m gonna give this a while, but I already have doubts it will be as flexible and agile as Flex and/or Actionscript 3.

I might just give up on Director and go for Unity3D. Been using that for a year and the new 2.0 version has a lot of the things that I’ve been wanting from both Director and Unity3D v1.6. Too bad it doesn’t have the installbase of Flash and Shockwave!