Flashy Flash 8

I’ve been keeping an eye on Flash 8’s new features via John Dowdell, and it’s all looking superb. Combinations of individual features result in powerful new capabilities; for example, the webcam support combined with the ability to analyse individual pixels allows EyeToy-like gaming. See Andreas Rehnberg’s demo for an idea of what can be done (it’s just a screen recording, so you don’t need Flash 8 or a webcam).

Here are some of the demos I’ve seen so far showing off the new visual effects; you’ll need the Flash 8 plugin:

The only snag is that the filters are very processor-intensive, severely limiting their use, but I’ll probably have a go at putting lighting and blurring effects into games anyway in case the performance hit is tolerable.

Oh, and they’ve finally fixed the ridiculous bitmap bug that everyone’s been nagging them to sort out since version 2 or 3. About bleedin’ time.

Surely Flash 9 will incorporate 3D and put the final nail in Director’s coffin…?

Fri 12th Aug 2005, 10:08pm GMT (updated Fri 12th Aug 2005, 10:18pm GMT)

Filed under: Client-side Coding, Design, Games and Multimedia, Software, Web