AIR 2.0 brings a lot of new features. Among them is the new ServerSocket class. The Socket class exists since Flash 9 and enabled a lot of new client/server applications. But it has always been limited to client side sockets as long as AIR (and the Flash Platform as a whole for that matter) is concerned. Therefor, this new server socket feature makes it possible to build actual server software using AIR!
Rich of this new and incredible ability, Christophe Coenraets posted a small but yet very powerful code snippet to build an HTTP web server using AIR 2.0!
Update: corrected a few glitches in the bounding sphere creation routine.
Optimization is always important. But when it comes to 3D for the Flash Platform, it’s an everyday battle. The first ideas that come to mind are to avoid:
- redrawing the same regions : each pixel value must be set once and only once
- rendering invisible objects : objects that are out of sight still take a lot of CPU horsepower
While Flash takes care of the first one in its very renderer, the second one is not handled. But that is something we can easily address!
The Technic
The method is called “frustum culling”. The big picture is that every mesh is approximated using a bounding volume (typically a sphere or a box). If the bounding volume is visible, the corresponding mesh is rendered. The two following pictures show the frustum culling caught in action:
The mesh is visible: TPS counter indicates 18900 triangles per seconds
The mesh is out of sight: frustum culling is acting and TPS counter indicates 0!
Code snippets and a live experiment right after the jump!
Loading and rendering Quake 2’s maps is a challenge because Flash 10 doesn’t handle complex 3D geometry very well. But what about a smaller count of polygons ? Say a 3D model for example… already done! What about an animated 3D model then?
Details, pictures and a demo application right after the jump…
Read more…
I just posted and blogged about a few new experiments built using DirectFlex on Direct Flex Labs:
- FPS: is it possible to display Half Life 1 graphics in Flash ? I don’t know yet… but this experiment is an improvement of the one I posted a while back
- Earth: I always wanted to implement the famous Google Earth in Flash. This might be a good first step! I made this experiment in approximately 1 hour to test out a few new features
Please let me know what you think about those new experiments. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated!