Papervision 3D 2.0 Alpha has been undergoing lots of changes and one you might want to know about is the object yaw, pitch and roll change.  Thisis changing on how you access them but only slightly.  This is good because you an read and write the values on the object not just set them. Per the papervision list from the man Tim Knip:

On many users request:

DisplayObject3D’s methods pitch(), yaw() and roll() are now getters / setters.

Usage:

do3d.yaw = degrees;
do3d.pitch = degrees;
do3d.roll = degrees;

var myYaw : Number = do3d.yaw;

This means these values are now ‘absolute’ values instead of previous
‘relative’ values as in deprecated do3d.yaw( 1 );

Let me know any issues (as I’m sure there are…)

Tim

This only affects the latest and greatest revisions of papervision but is definitely a good change.  It is good to make changes that make more sense without worrying about breaking changes.

It was announced that Flash content and SWF files are now searchable by Google and Yahoo searching crawlers.  This has yet to be really tested but it is good news that flash sites with textual content will be able to be searched like normal websites.  This knocks down a bit the “black box” approach to content when it is in flash rather than a HTML/XHTML based website.

Google has been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.

In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.

Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

I imagine that it is still more difficult to index flash content and this opens questions as to what is searched and how as content can be loaded in dynamically and some content might be overly verbose that should not be indexed such as code.  Also, the placement of text matters on a regular website so I imagine that it also matters according to what content is in a flash SWF file.

It will be interesting to hear how this evolves but as of right now it is good news that content in flash is searchable.  The format is now open and this is probably why the capability is now possible as there aren’t any fees to using the format.  So expect more accessibiliy from flash as time goes on like this.

The red and blue, Red5 and BlazeDS are available for push mechanisms similar to what Comet is trying to accomplish with sockets essentially that use the AMF format and AMF3 format with Flash/Flex that is extremely optimized for size and thus network traffic is less bulky.

Welcome to BlazeDS! BlazeDS is the server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex™ and Adobe AIR™ applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.

The evolution to more engaging RIAs has created the need for better data connectivity options. Remoting simplifies the reuse of existing server logic automatically marshalling calls between the Flash client and the Java methods on the server. In addition, the use of a AMF binary data transfer format increases performance, allowing applications to load data up to 10 times faster than with text-based formats such as XML or SOAP.

Previously available only as part of Adobe LiveCycle® Data Services ES, Adobe is contributing the proven BlazeDS technologies to the community under the LGPL v3. BlazeDS gives the rapidly growing Adobe developer community free access to the powerful remoting and messaging technologies developed by Adobe.

The odd thing about all this is both Red5 and BlazeDS are Java based. The AMF integration with Java is pretty solid with two major push capable servers using that (again with sockets behind the scenes but highly optmized with AMF/AMF3 and in multiuser case with remote shared objects - red5).

Push mechanisms are needed more and more and having this capabilty right into flash with AMF format remoting data proves to be very easy to integrate and if the backend is java then a pretty robust back end as well.

I use PyAMF for Python and Flourine for .NET as well as the usual AMFPHP but the need to push and have more optimization than a basic object socket connection might be in order.

3D models from basic video… This can be huge in all sorts of ways.  For exponential growth you need to go virtual.

• This is a technology called VideoTrace from Australia
• The Siggraph paper describing VideoTrace is available here (pdf 6MB)
• Larger videos available here, with a more compressed version here.

If you ever were a fan of Rebirth and Rebirth 2, this was a music kit that had two 303s, a 909 and an 808 kick drum (beastie says mmmmmm-m-m drop!).  Well Andre Michelle has re-ignited that awesomeness and upped it with the Audio Tools from hobnox!.

This not only has the famed 808, 909 and 303 (conveniently covered with stickers of love) but also sorts of channel mixers, pedals and sweet interface that mimics the inputs and outputs as well as customization on nearly every aspect of the audio creation with these tools. Use your mouse to move things around, connect ins and outs and move the whole setup around.

This setup on about 80 bpm and a little tinkering is groovy.

I think I just found my new batcave evil genius code monkey theme music

• Andre Michelle’s Blog
• English version of hobnox Audio Tools Direct link
• Rebirth nostalgia
• Audiotools blog

Apparently Andre and Joa made some noise and now you can too.  Also I noticed that some of it is in java for the sound output.  I wonder if Adobe missed an opportunity here in audio with flash, which will change probably in Flash 10 due to the Make Some Noise Adobe campaign and Tinic Uro for listening.  But for now have some fun. It is hard to find something that doesn’t sound good in the 80-90 bpm range.

Ever wanted to geocode in 3d with flex and AS3?  Mark Walters added a great simplified approach to this on the EDGE Adobe site that helps get you started.  It uses Yahoo maps to get the lat/long and then has a globe that you can add markers onto.

Some other great uses of 3d and interface are here, link roundup:

• New acrobat.com which includes buzzword (one app that makes RIA look good)
• Morphing objects in papervision 3d from Bigspaceship Labs
• Absolutely sick 3D maps in some cases better than Google Earth (slow to load but worth it)
• Den Ivanov’s Seasons
• Tagworld (flickr tag globe)

The Alternativa Platform has officially launched. It is a 3d engine for Flash/AS3. It has been announced on their blog today and this is an exciting development for 3d in flash, especially if you are a game developer or game company.

They have offered it free for non-commercial use in the form of SWC files. It is well oganized and lots more good stuff to come it seems in the GUI and some information on setting up the gaming platform on the server as well. It looks to be a complete package.

This is not an open source release but the Alternativa Platform is an extremely well done and amazing looking engine. It has configurations for 3d and isometric 3d.

Here is a shot from the engine.

• Announcement on the Alternativa Platform Blog
• API Reference
• Direct link, register and download
• Demos and more info
• Previous post on Alternativa with shots for isometric and FPS demos

Sputnik has been launched!

Here are all the classes in the package (SWC):

All Classes

Tink posted a great library manager for using external assets in your flash projects. When you start getting deep in projects you end up either having to roll your own that might end up being project specific, or you can just grab this from Tink and it is nice and standardized now for you.

Here’s and example of our Library & LibraryManager classes that we use in some of our Flex and AS 3.0 projects to manage our external assets stored in SWF’s.

The classes enabled you to create multiple libraries of embedded (retaining and giving access to code) or loaded SWF’s.

You can create instance of Library wherever you want, but you can also create them through the LibraryManager giving you a single class to gain access to all your Library instances.

As you develop more and more flash/flex projects with AS3 these types of utilities come in handy. Another that comes to mind is Arthur Debert’s BulkLoader and polygonal labs Data Structures for Game Developers that are all great kits.

Add Tink’s Library and LibraryManager to your arsenal today! Thanks Tink.

I have been consuming all the great additions to Flash 10 this weekend and one that really jumps out after you get past the visual, text and sound features (which are spectacular btw and most of what the community was asking for). But one feature snuck by, this is the one that ByteArray (Thibault Imbert) mentions/pointed out for managing files directly within Flash.

File Reference runtime access — Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.

This greatly lowers the bar to using Flash as a photo editor, document manager, customized application experiences, marking up content and saving locally, all without the need for server side script. I am a big fan of server side technologies and develop with them but even for bettering performance this could be huge.

Scenarios where this might be useful is editing applications, note taking (download a book with your notes), editors for docs/games/3d/textures,,, the possibilities are endless really.

Flash 9 just got mainstream and production ready (flash 9 penetration) at the tail end of last year but there are so many great things in the new version that I hope it comes out very soon. Flash it turning into quite a platform.

Alternativa Platform also has updated their engine for Flash 10 already (they must have had some inside early accessibility to it) and there are great possibilities here.

It is only beta (Flash 10) but there are great market opportunities to prepare for when this launches. Keep your eye on where the puck will be, not where it is currently at. I was concerned when Adobe bought Macromedia and the future of Flash but it appears they are taking this bull by the horns.

If you are ready to play with Flash 10 here is Flex and FlashDevelop updates to help you get started.

Also here is some code posted at ByteArray from Pleh for testing the new FileReference runtime access, usage is extremely simple and rests on this

var data:ByteArray = fileRef['data'];

/*
  FileReference Load Example By Pleh 17/05/08
*/

package {
	import flash.display.Loader;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.net.FileReference;
	import flash.net.FileFilter;
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;

	public class Flash10Test extends Sprite
	{
		private var fileRef:FileReference;

		public function Flash10Test()
		{
			fileRef = new FileReference();
			fileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, selectFile);
			fileRef.addEventListener(Event.OPEN, openFile);
			stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,stageClick);
		}

		private function selectFile(e:Event):void {
			fileRef['load']();
		}

		private function openFile(e:Event):void {
			var data:ByteArray = fileRef['data'];
			var loader:Loader = new Loader();
			loader.loadBytes(data);
			addChild(loader);
		}

		private function stageClick(e:Event):void{
			fileRef.browse([new FileFilter("All Formats (*.jpg,*.gif,*.png,*.swf)", "*.jpg;*.gif;*.png;*.swf", "JPEG;jp2_;GIFF;SWFL")]);
		}

	}
}

I would say more but it is time to play…

Recently on the papervision lists there have been some really creative uses of pv3d in games. I will highlight two here:

• Bowling Buddies (Facebook integrated game)
• AirShip demos

The Bowling Buddies game is made by the very creative Playfish.com company (more on the release at their blog). They have some great facebook/social network games combined with flash. With bowling buddies they created a game similar to Wii bowling (even with customize characters) and the best part is how they have scaled down versions. You can play in 2D, 3D and at different levels of quality to make it accessible to everyone. I think that will probably be needed with 3d flash games (Shockwave Director has LOD (Level of Detail) that helps with scaling down to slower machines but you have to do that yourself with the state of 3d engines in flash so far).

Bowling buddies and most playfish games are Facebook/Social Network based. You might say, why? (especially if you aren’t in the US where facebook is the biggest social network). But even Activision’s CEO calls facebook a threat to online gaming as we know it, this is because of the community aspect and the ability to play with friends and multiplayer games easily. Rather than setting up your own player find mechanism, facebook has it built in and all the viral aspects you need to garner more fans. So those into facebook and gaming are possibly ahead, but also it will be extremely competitive.

[ try bowling buddies ]

Airship is a really creative game that has been impressive to watch grow over the last weeks. It is now textured and performs pretty well. The best part is the Airship model and the fans. Very neat and I hope this one is seen through to a launched game. It is a bit like a RTS/Strategy overhead game that would be very cool to play multiplayer with Red5 server as well (just need the TIME!).

[ try airship demo ]

The best part is you can see after a year+ of release papervision and the other 3d engines are really changing the way gaming is done online. What was once a Java or Shockwave only capability, flash now has with evolving 3d engines, and there are playable fun games to prove it that are commercial ready.

Get your game on!

Adobe is taking the inside lane in the industry it seems with the Open Screen Project. What does this mean? It seems like SWF and FLV formats are now largely open and licenses removed. With the XFL format possibly on its way (probably based on mxml) to replace closed .FLA files it is pretty clear that Adobe and Flash will see a large uptick in the mindshare. As well as looking to create a broader mobile platform for the flash player.

The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by enabling the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment is intended to provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

To support this mission, and as part of Adobe’s ongoing commitment to enable Web innovation, Adobe will continue to open access to Adobe Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). This work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

This is big. It has mutiple prongs. Adobe would like to make Flash a common mobile standard, hrm no Apple on this list (it is probably a slight move there against that).

Adobe would also like to continue their lead of web video. And they finally are recognizing the closed format of SWF is not as desirable as an open one, there is still considerable control for Adobe over the player. But they get insights and contributions from many large companies to help make it work on their platform, engraining the format further. The providers, especially mobile and internet tv, will want to provide good user experiences to compete with the iPhone and regular T.V. respectively. Flash being open helps both of those markets.

Adobe is also moving further to open source key formats and technologies like the recent Flex 3 SDK and now the AMF format which was a roadblock. This is probably good news for servers like Red5 and also many other media servers and remoting services in many more place. AMF is particularly nice because it is a binary, extremely compact and limited bloat format. Without it being open it loses much of its benefit as a standard. Being open and a further crunching from the XML bloat services, this can be very good for many reasons such as throughput and faster services, apps and games with remote data.

Another reason is the desktop market. They want Flash to work flawlessly on Linux but they don’t’ have the manpower for a 2% market share. So this is a very smart move for the desktop players (AIR, and Linux Flash).

The only thing that partially makes it scary is the line up, Sony, Verizon, etc. As long as these are contributors and not partners in DRM crime then we have something. Hopefully they are in it to make better entertainment and mobile platforms cheaper.

Being able to peer into the code and a move to allow better open integration makes it a better platform, where better stuff can be built on top of that. Let’s hope it is done right. Everyone is making Apple look really closed and locked down lately.

• Open Screen Project
• Open Screen Project for Developers
• SWF Specification
• FLV Specification

This is older, from january, somehow I missed it but… nitoyon has created an AS3 port of jQuery. jQuery is my favorite javascript tool besides javascript itself. Mootools, prototype, and others like mochikit are all great but jQuery was the first to do lambda chain decorating and others followed suit.

But having this power in as3 is a great thing! $ selectors, common access methods to properties, methods, etc. All good stuff. Again this shows the fun in as3 or ES4 based languages like Actionscript because people are porting all sorts of libraries to it. If this performs I may just start using it daily TODAY!

For instance setting the stage align for use in full screen:

$(stage).attr({scaleMode: "noScale", align: "TL"});

That is too fun… The only thing not cool about this is all the spam at nitoyon’s blog : )

How about a functional Tweener call:

function animate(f:Boolean):void {
				// Select 'RoundRect' elements using CSS selector
				$("RoundRect:" + (f ? "odd" : "even"))
					.addTween({
						rotation: 90,
						scaleX: 0.5,
						scaleY: 0.5,
						time: 0.6,
						delay: 0.3,
						transition: "easeOutCubic"
					})
					.addTween({
						scaleX: 1,
						scaleY: 1,
						time: 0.5,
						delay: 0.9,
						transition: "easeOutElastic",
						onComplete: function():void {
							// restore the rotation and call again.
							this.rotation = 0;
							animate(!f);
						}
					});
			}
			animate(false);

Stuff to see and try

• CSS Selector Demo Source code plain text
• 25 boxes and Tweener Source code plain text
• SVN: http://snippets.libspark.org/svn/as3/as3Query/

Sean Christmann has a nice post on the AS3 AVM 2 ‘Elastic Racetrack’ cycles or virtual machine tick that runs an ES4 based javascript version of actionscript which we all know and love. The post has some info on how the AVM2 cycles run and can provide benefits to understanding frame rates and how execution is divided between script and render as well as player code from user code.

• Check out that and more at Craftymind like some other good stuff like garbage collection in AIR with actionscript 3 (as3) and serializing classes to files in AIR with AS3
• Original ‘Elastic Racetrack’ Post by Ted on Flex in 2005

This will blow you away. Found first via mrdoob (with quantum rss reading capability, before the message is concieved mrdoob is there).

Alternativa Platform, previously Alternativa Game, launched their Alternativa Platform milestone 1 and really one demo would have been enough but there are some great demos there that literally put them what appears a couple laps up on the 3d FPS style engine in Flash.

The engine is highly optimized and smooth, heavy on the processor, but using the ‘t’ key you can see some nice revealing triangle rendering. Also, playing with the field of view adds for some nice game effects. (try jumping on the fans in the half-life like room in the first demo)

Check the textures

See the Matrix

Get superpowers

From Above, Isometric

Here is what is to come from the platform:

• dynamic lighting and shadows (точечные и направленные источники света);
• bump lighting;
• parallax mapping;
• automatic UV-mapping;
• sprites, 3D-sprites;
• sprite lighting;
• texture objects;
• Global Illumination imitation;
• sprite pre-render system (phases render on server using uploaded 3D-models);
• animation system (including inverse kinematics);
• 3D-objects interactivity;
• physics simulation.

Congrats to the Russian based Alternativa Platform, the world is watching.