Adobe AIR Development

[Hasufel]

Hi all, just got the developer os2.0 preview (2.0.0.3778), and tried to display some stage3d enabled flash11 content on Playbook. Well, everything I tried, from my stuff to away3d /Adobe demos ends in dark screens: nothing is shown! Somehow cannot initialize the environment. I didnt try to publish using air3 yet, not sure if we're even allowed to do that...(If anyone knows about that, please share). I waited for hours to make sure we got air3/flash11, listened to everyone stating how cool and a breeze it was to port things, well, result: nothing runs for me! Could someone give a clue as to what to do to get stage3d initialized properly on Playbook, even when one uses .AUTO mode?

Air version 3.0.0.86, flash player version 11.0.21.33, but no stage3d...

First impressions tho on os2: runs smoother, browser seems really faster, snapier, and closing windows now is a breeze, tho keyboard feels a tad smaller than it used to be, but one finger selection is a good idea. And good ridance on the medias/all/games tabs!

I tried to run some webgl equivalent of my stage3d demos... sorry, cannot initialize webgl says the browser :/. Huh. Well, well, well.

[TongueDar]

AIR 3.1 will add Stage 3D support for mobile devices. So begining of next year is what was stated from what I recall by some of the key Adobe Flash guys.

[peter9477]

Julian Dolce said the 2.0 beta does not include the stage3d stuff, though I thought he said it would be in the release. Could be wrong.

Isn't the beta still under NDA though, and not something to post publicly about?

[TongueDar]

The udpate is actually available for anyone. There was an end user licesnse, if that contained an NDA, lots of people are screwed over on the BlackBerry forums.

But if the final release does include the AIR 3.1, that would be awesome, especially if it's avaiable shortly.

I was just going by what I recall Thibault Imbert mentioning on the Starling forum, that AIR 3.1 would be available early in 2012.

[zezke]

How do you setup Flash Builder to use AIR 3.0 actually?

[greg209]

Thanks for pointing out Stage3D isn't in the 2.0 beta. I'll hold off taking the plunge for a while. 

If Stage3D isn't going to be available until 2012 and in Air3.1 but will be available in the release version of OS2.0, does that mean the timescale for a public release of 2.0 will also be 2012, post the Air 3.1 release?

It'd be interesting if anyone has any timescales for when 2.0 is expected to land as a proper update - with all the e-mail, calender, etc apps included. More waiting around....

Greg

[damacon]

according to devcon europe 2012 session presenter of "DEV342 – What’s New in the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR Apps?"

Julian Dolce

Platform Lead

QNX Software Systems

there is no support for Stage3D at the moment. And RIM does not plan to implement it until they will see interest from developers. I'd like to see such support and you can increase chances of it being included into BB10 by asking RIM to add it

[Hasufel]

I am waiting since too long now for Stage3D support on the Playbook.
It was announced to be released back in October 2011 and some stage3d demos were shown (Zombie Tycoon among others), so why wouldn't it be released if they managed to get it to work 5 months ago? 5 months! It's a very long time for us.
I thought last year that the Playbook would have been the first mobile device to support full stage3d support, and was hoping for a reversal in Playbook market shares; but lost faith when RIM pushed hard "HTML5" and WebGL and almost missed showcasing Flash 11/Air3/Stage3d (like 10 seconds vs 30 minutes talk) at the conference... We talk a lot among us fellows Flash developers, and did bet that if RIM wasn't pushing Adobe's Stage3d by the end of 2011 (or Adobe pushing to get Stage3d on RIM's platform...), it would be the end for "Play" book (and Adobe, and us). I sent some messages to Thibault Imbert (Adobe) just after the RIM conference, asking him if he knew why we did not have Stage3d yet on OS2 beta, only to be ignored for some days and answered that we would need yet another version for Stage3d to come (and not on Flash anymore, it stopped a version short to support Stage3D). Just to get things straight, he showcases stage3d support on Playbook in all his slides since last July... Adobe's annoucement about ending Flash support on mobile just came with the release of Air3, a super odd timing, as we all knew that Stage3d could have changed a lot. For us it was too late: in the mid-run Flash will die if they focus solely on desktops which are, alas not the main access to the net anymore.... It's a mixed feeling about Air's future, too. Even if Rovio was paid big bucks by Adobe/Pepsi Mexico to get Angry Birds running in Stage3d (http://vuelatazos.angrybirds.com/ (7 developers to do it!))... What are they waiting to release Stage3d on Playbook? 5 months! And now, this? Does this mean we have to switch to Unity, or SDL/NDK to get our games running with hardware accel?

[zezke]

I certainly understand your frustrations about Stage3D, but I get RIM's point of view as well. Why bother with implementing a quite complex 3D API when you have the Native SDK that is at least twice as powerful?

Furthermore AIR certainly isn't known for it's top performance and if they want BlackBerry 10 to seem well performing, they would need good performing third party applications.

[Hasufel]

...That's exactly what they want you to think: "too complex to implement" and "lack of performance". Come on Zezke

They did implement it, perhaps not entirely, but Zombie was showcased 5 months ago, certainly covering pretty much all what we need. Job done, they didn't complain about how difficult it was to implement (on a single device), especially when they annouced that they implemented WebGL and optimized HTML5 big time

Air alone is not known for its top performance I agree, but with stage3d, it's another story: the gap between an application with and without stage3d is drastic, especially on mobile devices, and that is what interests us right now (tablet os sdk for adobe air forum, hello): being able to provide good enough performing third party applications with our tool.