Adobe today announced Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3 software for Apple iOS (via AIR), Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, Mac OS, Windows, connected TVs and other platforms.
According to Adobe, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 allow game publishers to instantly deliver console-quality 2D and 3D games over the Internet to nearly all PCs and many other devices. Media companies can take advantage of new features to deliver protected feature-length HD video through the Web, in mobile apps, and even with surround sound for connected TVs. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 provide a cross-device entertainment platform, enabling the best in online gaming and premium video while helping content publishers to reach the broadest possible audience with highly-leveraged development investments.
Dozens of new features in Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 allow developers to freely choose the right mix of Flash, HTML5 and native code to provide user experiences across PCs and devices. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be publicly available in early October. Flash Builder and Flex, Adobe’s open source framework for building mobile, Web and desktop apps, will offer support for the new features in an upcoming release before the end of the year.
“With this milestone release Adobe pushes the envelope of what is possible on the Web with a typical PC and opens up a new world of immersive, high-performance gaming experiences,” said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of Platform, Adobe, in the press release. “Flash offers the best way for content owners to deliver their most demanding experiences, including games, premium video and sophisticated data-driven apps, to all of their users, while HTML 5 tools such as Adobe Edge and Dreamweaver are ideal for building interactive Web pages, rich ads, branded microsites and general-purpose mobile applications.”
Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 offers new features including:
• Accelerated 2D/3D Graphics: Full hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D graphics enable 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2. Developers are able to animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver console-quality games on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions. A pre-release brings these same accelerated 2D and 3D capabilities to mobile platforms including Android, Apple iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. A production release for mobile platforms is expected in the near future. For examples of 3D games for Flash Player, visit www.adobe.com/go/gaming.
• AIR Native Extensions: With support for thousands of highly-optimized, open-source libraries, developers are able to tap into unique software and hardware capabilities including access to device data, vibration control, magnetometers, light sensors, dual screens, near field communications (NFC) and more. Native extensions also allow developers to more deeply integrate AIR applications with other business software.
• Captive Runtime: Developers can automatically package AIR 3 with their applications to simplify the installation process on Android, Windows and Mac OS in addition to Apple iOS. Users no longer have to download and update AIR separately on any of these platforms, or BlackBerry Tablet OS, which includes AIR built in. In addition, with the captive runtime option developers can manage version updates to their application independent of general AIR updates by Adobe.
• Content Protection: Premium video content can now be protected using Adobe Flash Access 3 across all supported platforms, including new support for mobile platforms.
• HD Video Quality Across Platforms: Full frame rate HD video can now be displayed within AIR applications on Apple iOS devices using H.264 hardware decoding. Rich applications on televisions are also able to deliver HD video with 7.1 channel surround sound.
• Rental and Subscriptions Support: With support for Adobe Flash Access and Adobe Pass, content publishers can take advantage of rental and subscription options for more flexible business models and offer TV Everywhere content to more than 80 percent of U.S. pay TV subscribers.
• Compatibility: 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS and Windows ensures a seamless experience with the latest 64-bit browsers.
Source: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Did you ever throw a really big, fancy party, and nobody came?
Me, neither.
I have to admire Adobe for continuously trying to make their Flash runtime more efficient and secure with every iteration. It’s good to see the company focus on those things that are the most important to end users.
:/
What’s to admire? All Adobe did was release a statement about how great an unreleased Flash runtime is supposedly going to be. All the Flash runtimes Adobe has actually released are insecure, unstable, inefficient, blinking advertisement proliferating, fan accelerating crap.
Flash’s demise is only Adobe’s own fault. If they would be able to make it actually optimized, light and fast, then no one would really try to get rid the humanity of it, even though it would be no less proprietary than now.
I see sarcasm is no longer valid currency at MDN. 🙁
Don’t worry, TheMac, some of us got it. 🙂
Sorry I didn’t pick up on it. I guess that :/ face implied sarcasm.
Grasping at straws. Pathetic.
Adobe Flash.
My, how quaint.
Jeez… These guy’s at Adobe are persistent… I guess beating a dead horse is still viable alternative to burial.
AWESOME! Flash was a slow dog in 2D, so will we get to watch it and the battery die and rot before our eyes in mere moments, in glorious 3D!???
What I find extremely funny is that Adobe is planning to blend “the right mix of html5 and flash” and allow developers to choose what they want. Basically, they’re letting developers decide whether they want to use html5 or flash. and most of them, thanks to already building apps and mobile websites, are going to choose html5.
Maybe, with even microsoft planning to drop support for flash in windows 8, they are finally realizing that flash may be dead. Flash 11 is a gradual transition version, where developers will have to familiarize themselves with html5 if they haven’t already.
The best thing adobe can hope for at this point is to eventually be the company primarily releasing advanced tools and engines for HTML5 developers. All this flash crap will die. About time, too.
Remember that best-selling iOS game that Adobe crowed on about as having been built via Adobe Air cross-compiler tools? That game’s animation was only 2-D, yet it can’t run on the first-gen iPad. So, it’ll be fun to watch any 3-D games created by Adobe Air 3 require an iPad 3 to run, while those who don’t use Adobe’s tools will have no problems.
And it’s good to see that, with all of their severe security and performance problems, they’ve focused adding features rather than fixing those problems. Nice priorities, Adobe.
Like having a dirty old flasher lurking in your computer. Good riddance to old and obsolete rubbish.