[Papervision3D] OpenGL support in AS 3.0

[Rob Bateman]

Opengl support is already possible with haxe and xinf (if you don't mind
converting all your code to haxe)

http://xinf.org/trac

http://haxe.org/

haxe is basically a slightly different flavour of as3, and xinf is a library
that can be used to access opengl commands through neko (one of the runtimes
that haxe can compile to)

Now. Someone has already tried converting papervision to haxe here:

http://hi.baidu.com/actionscript3/blog/category/Haxe

but i'm not entirely sure of the details as the site is in Japanese.


As to my opinion on an opengl'ed flashplayer in the future - i think it is
not the silver bullet some people try to make out. Sure the graphical
rendering would be much faster, but another bottleneck would crop up. Most
likely the as3 avm, which is a snail compared to the c++ based opengl
library. So speed issues would simply swing back to a coding problem.


if people really can't wait for opengl in the browser, then maybe try the
new opengl-es plugin here

http://blog.vlad1.com/2007/11/26/canvas-3d-gl-power-web-style/

which utilises a new plugin available currently for firefox 3 beta. plans
for opera, safari and ultimately iexplorer plugins are abound, but at
present unconfirmed.

Rob




On Dec 3, 2007 10:36 PM, Jon Bradley <jbradley at postcentral.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 3, 2007, at 2:07 PM, tomsamson wrote:
>
> > Personally i think graphic card support is more than overdue for flash
> > now, as it shows most other attempts to gain performance are more and
> > more alienating the non pro coder sections of the flash content
> > creator
> > community.
>
>
> It's not just graphic card support, it's OpenGL support. Not all
> graphic cards support OpenGL, and OpenGL implementation is not the
> same across Mac/PC platforms.
>
> On the PC tip, Microsoft over the years has been piss poor in
> releasing libraries so that card developers can include proper GL
> support on the cards (look at Windows Vista for a prime example of
> poor OpenGL support - more than half the time it's not available).
> Microsoft pushes DirectX, not OpenGL.
>
> Secondly, you run into major compositing issues. OpenGL doesn't do
> vectors natively, it renders polylines. It's not going to have the
> display quality of Flash. And, to mix the two environments is asking
> for serious problems - a resolution independent display medium with a
> bitmap medium.
>
> While I absolutely agree that some type of hardware support would be
> awesome in Flash, it would be a major undertaking that I can
> guarantee would be fraught with bugs and lead to significant
> instability in the Flash Player across platforms.
>
> cheers,
>
> jon
>
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>



-- 
Rob Bateman
Flash Development & Consultancy

rob.bateman at gmail.com
www.infiniteturtles.co.uk
www.away3d.com
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