The new dimension of Flash

April 2008

Adobe Flash® (formerly known as Macromedia Flash) has changed dramatically over the past 12 years. This well-known plug-in has evolved from a simple animation tool to a comprehensive development platform utilized by hundreds of millions of Internet users.

The Flash-developer community recently witnessed the introduction of a tool that is revolutionizing the world of Web interactivity: Papervision3D.

What exactly is it? In a few words, Papervision3D is an open-source 3D engine for Flash – a free component that can be used to generate three-dimensional environments.

Papervision3D's open-source status presents a number of advantages. To begin with, it's free. What's more, as with all open-source projects, Flash developers benefit from a very active, mutually supportive community that is continually seeking to improve the technology.

A new world of possibilities

The addition of the third dimension in Flash opens the door to a world of new possibilities. For example, this tool can be used to create a 3D game, offer virtual tours, provide multi-angle product views, and more – all this with the most widely used plug-in on the Internet.

"But I've already seen things in 3D on the Web," you say. Yes, but until now all 3D solutions have required the installation of an extra plug-in, which negatively impacted the adoption rate.

The limitations

Of course, all these wonderful possibilities come with certain limitations. The 3D engine is still in the early stages and thus doesn't always function optimally.

For example, an object can't be represented photo-realistically with the current version of the engine. It remains very difficult to optimize and requires a sufficiently powerful computer to ensure a fluid experience.

For Flash animators, it is a complex technology that calls for fairly extensive knowledge in 3D and programming.