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Flash Mobile is Dead, why is Unity going backwards?

Discussion in 'Flash' started by namoricoo, Jan 11, 2012.

  1. namoricoo

    namoricoo

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    Here is the Link.

    Flash is Dead

    I don't understand if Flash is dead why we are spending so much effort on dead technology. Why doesn't Unity focus on HTML 5 Games instead of Flash. Anyone else have a thought about this?
     
  2. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Unity can't run on HTML 5, that's why. Flash Mobile being dead has nothing to do with anything, anyway.

    --Eric
     
  3. andorov

    andorov

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    This topic is being discussed on multiple threads...

    Also, as Eric pointed out, Flash MOBILE is dead, not Flash Desktop.
     
  4. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I find attention to detail quite helpful. It's like you weren't able to read beyond the page title for that link.
     
  5. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    1: Unity's Flash export isn't intended for use on mobile devices.

    2: Doesn't Flash still support "native" export of standalone apps to mobiles? If so, it's not "dead", it just doesn't support browsers (which is fair enough for a whole bunch of reasons).

    3: What's with all the hate? I'm no fan of Flash per-se, but I love increased market reach.
     
  6. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Exactly, it's market reach. Plus epic's gone and done it for unreal engine as well. Must keep up with the joneses!
     
  7. namoricoo

    namoricoo

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    I want to thank everybody for the clarification. If somebody made a competition to see who could get Unity to run on HTML 5 that would be a good competition. When money is involved all of the creative people come out. Next time I'll try to read more other post before I create my own thread. Thank you and have a nice day.
     
  8. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    It cannot be done. I don't think you understand what HTML 5 is. Also, a competition is useless since Unity Technologies is the only entity that could do it, if it were possible.

    --Eric
     
  9. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Yeah, the competition wasn't to make Unity run in Flash, that's already done. The competition was to make some projects using that new feature to show it off (and generate bug reports to hurry things along a little).
     
  10. explozer

    explozer

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    I'm sure unity will eventually try to reach for exporting to html5. But as of now I don't think html5 is ready. Possibly in 6 months unity team will try harder when html5 is stable and fully developed. As of now being able to export to flash is quite a nice feature for some. So unity isn't going backwards, more like taking a turn and spreading out like it's been doing all these years.
     
  11. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I think that people are missing something important, here. HTML is essentially a document format. It's a "markup language". Nothing more. In and of itself it can not be used as a game engine.

    When you guys talk about HTML5 what you're really talking about is WebGL, which is a separate, auxiliary technology supported by HTML5, in some browsers, through its canvas functionality and the use of JavaScript. It should also be noted that WebGL is not a completed standard, it's still very much a work in progress.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  12. cannon

    cannon

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    Again, Flash for mobile is not dead.

    The Flash web player for mobile is dead, because Adobe is instead focusing on Flash native mobile apps.
    They're copying Unity here (web player on desktop but package to native for mobile).

    Mobile web players are moot anyway, most games are played via native apps skirting the caching issues that would plague web-player based games.

    Unity is doing the right thing here by targeting NaCL / Flash. I'm pretty sure they'd be glad if there were a usable standard to publish 3D games on the web to as their core product is the authoring tool and not the plugin, but HTML5 / WebGL in it's current form is just not properly supported in the wild yet.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  13. tripknotix

    tripknotix

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    namoricoo WebGL 3D was denied entry into HTML5 standard, webgl only works in a few browsers, alot of browsers do not Support web gl, both desktop and mobile. including the new tablets and arm based desktops taht are coming out, they wont support webgl either.

    also bad news, HTML5 companies are going bankrupt namoricoo,
    http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Moblyng+Games+News/news.asp?c=36703
    ---Moblyng closes doors as cross-platform HTML5 play 'fails to monetise'---

    Sorry to inform you of the bad news.
     
  14. _Petroz

    _Petroz

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    The Unity web player download is a barrier to entry, most of the online gamers already have flash installed and it's a trusted brand. The 'Flash is dead!' thing I have heard before, only time will tell. Flash was ubiquitous and with the rise of mobile browsers it is not any more. However many people still do the vast majority of their web browsing on a PC.

    It's up to Adobe to adapt and survive, and I think the development of Stage3D is the direction they're taking it. I don't know too much about these technologies but as mentioned it seems like WebGL is the major competitor. Flash seems to have a head start on web based 3D gaming so things are looking good.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  15. KarelA

    KarelA

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    Unity is not going backwards. This is just an investment. Do you have any idea how many flash developers there are in the world?

    Unity welcomes them all on board. So who cares if and when flash dies. Unity will be like Noah's Ark sailing with millions of flash developers to a new and promised paradise (in other words migrating everyone to a new platform with the click of the mouse). WebGL or whatever the new 3D web standard will be. By then Unity will have such a huge user base that the competition for other 3D engines will be very hard (i try to avoid word impossible here :) ).
     
  16. Lucas Meijer_old

    Lucas Meijer_old

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    just fyi, there is no technical reason we couldn't make unity target html5. sure html5 is still lacking in several areas, but over time it will mature. Having already ported our player technology to actionscript, there is no reason we wouldn't be able to bring it to html5/javascript if we were to decide to throw the engineering power at that problem.
     
  17. AcidArrow

    AcidArrow

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    The confusion probably came from all the talk that flash video players should be replaced by the html5 video tag. Other than that HTML 5 has nothing to do with flash.

    I don't care much about the flash export myself, mainly because the performance can never be as good as the web plugin, but I can see why Unity did it and why it can be good for people.
     
  18. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    Beside the fact that Unity does not support 2D rendering, that the planned 2D library for unity scheduled for 3.0 might not even make it into 3.x and the fact that HTML5 has no 3D layer you mean which likely everyone would consider a definite reason for no? ;)
    Your engineering power does not change fundamental 'does not exists' as it does not matter if unity runs on js if there is no rendering layer to run in. WebGL still is and never will be HTML5, its webgl, a whole own can of worms.
    Also the massive audio problems can't be tackled by UT either, either HTML5 and the browser makers fix them or you can skip it, no matter how many millions you throw at it.


    And there never was a statement or roadmap for Stage 3D to even go to mobile so I don't get where this point was digged out. The android flash is not even capable to do its job right on cpu, not considering gpu at all (its as crappy as on any *nix platform, even a SGS2 goes down with more or less trivial 2D flash games), so chances for Stage 3D on mobile in 2012 were basically 0 right from the start, as it requires Tegra4 or PowerVR6+ARM15 to compensate for Adobes incapability or desinterest writing adequatly optimized non windows players and runtimes.
    And no halfway intelligent Unity developer would use the Flash to native iOS cross compiler either, if it ever supports Stage 3D, due to the major performance penalty, native code binding lack and general feature lack, so thats no topic either.
     
  19. cannon

    cannon

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    Stage3D for mobile is on Adobe's official blog, from an entry last year during their Flash Player 11/Air 3 launch.
    Still pointless for us though, as they have no halfway decent authoring tool and if you're using Unity to author anyway it's much better to just use the native iOS/Android export.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  20. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Yep, which ties in with someone else's comment that Stage3D is Adobe's investment to make Flash valuable into the future.

    At the moment Flash is largely found anywhere there's online video. However, there's now a transparent, standard alternative and no reason for people to use Flash for that, as well as for a lot of the other things that Flash used to be the go-to tool for (some forms of animation, and so on).

    Browser-based 3D is undeniably on the way, though, and beating WebGL to the punch means that Flash is now more or less the de-facto standard for that, which means it definitely has a reason to stick around for a while yet. Browser wars only help it in that regard, because while IE is busy being different and everyone else is still trying to figure out how to get along, Flash is already happily providing a consistent (well... close enough...) experience to everyone.

    Browser-based 3D is quite likely to take off over the next couple of years the same way that browser-based video did a few years ago, and Flash and its users are in a perfect position to take advantage.
     
  21. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    If it were done right, agreed.
    If it is done like Stage 3D is done, not even using a standard graphics API layer, with artificial limitations and the still bad performance of the flash runtime environment, with graphical and other media limitations not even DirectX7 had a decade ago, still being heck insecure, not offering proper networking although being called a the 'defacto standard webtechnology', not working with hw acceleration at all on Linux and working with its common bad performance on OSX, its the next big step for Flash to the game technology hell and anything that accelerates that (strong push of Unity Webplayer, Adoption of NaCl) is more than welcome from my end :)
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2012
  22. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Nobody's going to argue that improved technology wouldn't make things better. But as it is, none of those things are as viable as Stage3D... yet... and Stage3D is good enough for us to deliver what our users want. :)
     
  23. sondun2001

    sondun2001

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    Flash for mobile browser is dead, AS3 is still a very alive and supported language used for AIR mobile development and desktop browser.