3D Games with GPU acceleration in Flash Player

[MR.B]

With the release of Adobe Flash Player 10 it now can use the GPU to accelerate images, effects and 3D. As well as use GPU acceleration for Flash based video (like Youtube, or HD video within Flash for instance).

I think this is a big thing, which is why i'm posting about it. New kinds of 3D games (that actually look decent) could start appearing that you simply play in your web browser window. Or websites could start having 3D interfaces.
Before V10, to do anything that even looked 3D in flash took up massive amounts of CPU power, and applying effects to video in real-time was pretty much out of the question. I could have made the most simple 3D things in Flash that would have completely crippled my 3.8GHz quad-core. Vector based graphics do not run at all well on CPU's.
I know other things like Java can do some of this stuff, but not to the same extent, and with the same kind of performance as Flash.

Anyway, here are some playable 3D demo's.. Click on the images to run them....
Demo's

- Obviously you need Flash Player 10 for them to work.

 

[MR.B]

They will also use CPU (of course!), just like any game, but they will now also use GPU aswell.

This particular flash based 3D engine can also run in Flash player 9 but with no GPU acceleration, so it runs about 60% slower. If you uninstall FP10 and try running one of the demo's full screen linked in my first post, your'll see how poorly they run. The resolution in these demo's also scales according to the browser window size, so if i have the window full screen on my 2560x1600 monitor, then the demo runs at that res. I get about 30 - 50FPS average at this res, which is ******* crazy performance for a web browser.

What's Flash actually like to write 3D graphics in? Does it support it properly, or do you have to hack it together?

In Flash CS4 you can now very easily make 3D things, with little or no coding. And with effects and video acceleration as far as i know (aint got CS4, was only out 2 days ago) you have the option to enable GPU acceleration when you publish the Flash file (save it as a .swf). But to do more advanced stuff like the demo's i linked you need to download separate components, like the Alternativa3D engine those demo's use. Then when Flash Player is loaded it loads in the Alternativa3D components/scripts that are also on the server.

 

[MR.B]

Also, that polygon recalculation/triangulation shiz is proper weird. How on earth is that efficient?

It's like that as it's on a low quality setting, when you stop moving you will noticed things get smoothed out/AA'ed. It's to make it run ok on poor machines.

 

[MR.B]

It's interesting how that in IE8 BETA 2, the frame rate is locked at 64FPS, where as in FF3 is 100FPS. But in IE8 it only takes up about 7MB, in FF3 it's more than tripple.

I can imagine in the future kids arguing over browsers about what one has the best performance for games... like they do with consoles!


@ Weebull, yeah i see what you mean now, thats very weird... guess they have a reason for it, maybe.. reminds me of PS1 games though.

@ spookywillow, what do you use to monitor GPU usage? i found ATI's CCC is extremely inaccurate for it or dont even work at all (if ya using that)

 

[MR.B]

I missed that part of the OP for some reason. Not sure about performance, but Java is much more advanced as it allows full access to OpenGL. Flash just lets you do some basic 3D stuff.

I dont think you know much on the latest Flash from your comment.
The above demo's for a start are not basic 3D stuff. Flash now allows access to Direct 3D on Vista, and OpenGL on Mac and Linux. Action Script 3.0 (Flash coding language) is now also more like C++ and allows for way more complex stuff compared to AS2.0.

 

[MR.B]

The stuff on that page IS basic 3D stuff

No way! Basic 3D stuff is something like 3D menu's (like the rotating phones in the vid you linked) or simple 3D objects like squares or triangles. The Bunker Demo has graphics around the same level as Quake 2. Because of GPU acceleration now taking a lot of the load off with FP10, Alternativa3D in the future will be adding more advanced things like parallax mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows... obviously it's not going to compare to Crysis lol, probably more around Quake 3 level, which is far from being basic and being able to run that in a browser will be very impressive.

Actually i see a demo of Quake running in Flash Player 10... but it was in a video at some Adobe conference... cant find it anywhere on the net...

 

[MR.B]

On websites like miniclip and what not. I'm pretty sure some of these were GPU accelerated too but I'm not certain if that was flash or something else.

If the examples on the OP are using the GPU, it's not using it very much cos my GPU activity meter reads 0%, lol.

You're using the ATI CCC to look at GPU activity right? well dont because it's rubbish! it dont work properly.. like a lot of ATI things... I've run games in window mode and had 0% activity.

And if you see anything on miniclip before around the 17th of this month when Flash Player 10 was out, then they weren't using GPU. Flash 9 and lower does not allow it. You probably see something like this! but that uses Adobe Shockwave Player which isn't half as popular as Flash use.