This is a bit nifty. A Russian company called Alternativa are working on a 3D engine that runs in straight, browser Flash. And flipping crikey, it’s not bad.
There’s a couple of demo areas you can trudge about – a science fiction-themed bunker (with footsteps I’d swear are from Deus Ex, and I know the bleepy noises too – someone please tell me in the comments), and an outdoor ancient ruin in the sunshine. Check them out. Be a bit impressed.
The potential for this is rather huge. If this is what Flash 9 can do, and Alternativa are saying Flash 10 is already dramatically improving performance, just think what Flash 20 will be capable of.
In fact, Alternativa have good ambitions for the project. Future plans include dynamic lighting, bump lighting, paralax mapping, 3D sprites, and animation and physics additions. Their brains being farther reaching than mine, they don’t only see the gaming possibilities for this. Think about architects wanting to show their plans without the customer needing to install CAD programmes. (Take a look at this demo for an example of how smooth this is). Or 3D spaces for interactive advertising – how much more likely would you be to play with the banner if you could walk around inside it? Thanks to Mr Parkin for his ever-excellent tippage.
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Okay, running in Flash is neat, but this is a fairly crappy software rasteriser. I’m pretty sure Quake had scenes with more complicated geometry.
It’ll all go out the window when Flash eventually gets hardware acceleration anyway.
Thank you guys for sharing your opinions on Alternativa3D technology future. We understand it’s pros and contras, and invite everybody to take part in it’s development by trying out engine capabilities and dropping some feedback to the forum.
P.S.: seems like almost noone guessed sound’s source :) It’s a compilation of a number of sounds, being modified to uor needs.
I immediately thought Half-Life for all those sounds, reguardless of reading Deus-Ex… But yes, they could easily be from multiple games.
VRML is dead.
Long live VRML.
I reckon the bleeps are from the X-wing games
There’s a new trailer out for the new Mummy film…
http://www.robcohenthemummy.com/video.php
See if you can spot a somewhat familiar sound effect (mentioned earlier in these comments) in there…!
Yeah man, old-hat on this one. Papervision’s been doing this for ages, and the real deal is that we’re not going to see anything cool from this until it’s based on a non-proprietary platform. In other words, fuck technology that derives from flash. Get this running on Gnash (Opensource flash) and call me.