This is what Flash can do in 2008

http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/ru/files/2008/01/characterparallax.swf

by est • 16 years ago

27 39 16 years ago

blog.alternativaplatform.com

lenni• 16 years ago

This sure is impressing, but nobody said Flash doesn't have some good features. The question is about whether anybody who wants to can implement a player for this page.

est4• 16 years ago

http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/ru/files/2008/04/bunker....

and

http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/ru/files/2009/02/hero.sw... (press space to rotate)

swombat2• 16 years ago

The hero example is a lot better than the one you posted.

drKarl• 16 years ago

With HTML5

http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/textures

raimondious• 16 years ago

The SWF specification is published. Anyone who wants to can http://www.scaleform.com/products/gfx. You can also create a compiler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTASC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWFTools.

pieter• 16 years ago

Not respecting dvorak keyboard layout, even in 2008?

entitlement• 16 years ago

Lack of universal acceptance was one of the cons you either accepted, or naively overlooked, back when you decided dvorak was the way to go. It'd be nice to see it work in more places, sure, but it just ain't... you're conflating 'should' and 'could'.

Groxx• 16 years ago

The issue with ignoring dvorak is that any web browser (heck, nearly any application) will handle it just fine. Flash apparently doesn't, or makes doing simple things (like capturing +/- keystrokes) hard enough that people don't do them in a generic way.

Given that Flash is primarily used in the web browser, and most of the world doesn't use QWERTY, it's rather shameful.

A quick test on my end shows that the Flash example indeed does not respect dvorak, while a Javascript key event captures the same code regardless of layout. Including Japanese. How's Flash handle that?

weavejester• 16 years ago

Alternative keyboard layouts work for pretty much everything. Almost all applications rely on the OS to translate key mappings, so there's virtually no incompatibility to worry about. I don't think I've ever come across an application that didn't work just as well in Dvorak as Qwerty.

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

A snarky Apple fan could respond in the same way with regard to the absence of Flash on the iPhone products.

hackermom• 16 years ago

It's just plain displacement mapping. It's a very simple (and old), but versatile technique allowing a large amount of effects to be done. The first time I saw this was in 93 or 94, rendered in real time in 256*256 in 25 fps, on an Amiga running a 14mhz 68020 processor. THAT was impressive to me, but seeing this 15 years later in 15-20 fps in Flash on a 2ghz machine just isn't.

swombat2• 16 years ago

Agreed - Also worth looking at the other examples est posted lower in the discussion. Those are more interesting.

dca• 16 years ago

Exactly. And flash was introduced 14 years ago. It really has no excuse for not having better performance at this point. I'm glad its dying.

mhd• 16 years ago

I am not an atomic playboy!

jleard• 16 years ago

And that was 1993. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCW-axRJV8#t=4m40s

baskinghobo• 16 years ago

I remember something exactly like this except it was an Asian lady and it looked like a real photo. Also instead of looking away from the cursor her eyes were following the cursor.

bd• 16 years ago

Here is a very similar effect in canvas:

http://29a.ch/2010/3/24/normal-mapping-with-javascript-and-c...

winter_blue• 16 years ago

It's so slow.. According to hackermom the 14Mhz Amiga could do this at 25 fps, any idea why this is so slow on modern computers?

MichaelGG• 16 years ago

It's not slow on modern computers. It's slow on these environments that weren't made to execute code quickly, much less do any pixel manipulation. How many orders of magnitude more instructions is it to set a pixel on an Amiga, versus setting it via JavaScript?

efsavage• 16 years ago

Because it's running in canvas? In other words, it's running within abstraction layer upon abstraction layer, with various other abstraction layers involved to help make sense of the fact that there are too many abstraction layers.

The amiga code was probably pretty close to talking to the graphics driver directly. Canvas is cool, but in terms of performance it's never really going to compete with native code, or even with flash for that matter since flash can remove some complexity by only building for a single, predictable, optimized environment.

mitjak• 16 years ago

Not in Chrome it isn't!

Shorel3• 16 years ago

It's just as fast in Opera!

not_an_alien2• 16 years ago

'Similar', but not the same - it's only changing the color and not actually displacing the bitmap. Big difference.

tomlin• 16 years ago

Really? What dimension of reality are we living in if we're even considering comparing this to canvas today?

keltex• 16 years ago

Dramatically faster on Chrome vs. Firefox. I think Google is right... javascript speed does make a difference.

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

And how would this improve the web experience? (considering you can do similar stuff with canvas as well...)

teamonkey• 16 years ago

A bit of context: this is a demo showing parallax mapping, which was a soon-to-be-released feature of the Flash-based Alternativia engine at the time. It's was never supposed to be a state-of-the-art demonstration of Flash.

http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/2008/01/04/character-...

owengot• 16 years ago

One word: Indeed.. http://twitpic.com/1l9b7k

This is what Flash can do in 2008

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