Unreal Engine 3 coming to Adobe Flash

During his keynote at Adobe MAX 2011, Epic Games founder, CEO, and technical director Tim Sweeney presented attendees with Unreal Engine 3 running inside of a Flash-based environment, revealing support for the engine was coming to Flash Player 11.

Xav de Matos

October 4, 2011 1:45 PM

Along with consoles, handhelds, and toasters around the world, support for the Unreal Engine 3 has been added to Adobe's Flash Player. During his keynote at Adobe MAX 2011, Epic Games founder, CEO, and technical director Tim Sweeney presented attendees with UE3 running inside of a Flash-based environment.

During his talk, Sweeney showcased Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 running in real-time using Adobe Flash Player 11, which launched yesterday.

In a press release following the presentation, Epic noted that Adobe's Flash Player is "a key technology for gaming on social networks and the web." Promising that Flash's new support for Unreal Engine 3 will "usher in the leap from simplistic 2D game experiences to world-class 3D gaming on the Web," Epic says that developers now have the ability to animate "millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second" to deliver users "console-quality games" on a multitude of platforms that support Flash.

The announcement says licensees will gain access to these new features. Visit Epic's official site for images of Unreal Tournament 3 running in the Flash environment.

Xav de Matos

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

Filed Under

From The Chatty

Refresh Go To Thread

Shacknews

 reply
October 4, 2011 1:45 PM

Xav de Matos posted a new article, Unreal Engine 3 coming to Adobe Flash.

During his keynote at Adobe MAX 2011, Epic Games founder, CEO, and technical director Tim Sweeney presented attendees with Unreal Engine 3 running inside of a Flash-based environment, revealing support for the engine was coming to Flash Player 11.
- holinka
  
   reply
  October 4, 2011 2:37 PM
  
  I'm not super familiar with the 3D stuff in Flash but does this use a system's 3D hardware or is it all software rendered? Is there a lot of performance overhead associated with using Flash for 3D?
  - jra101
    
     reply
    October 4, 2011 2:41 PM
    
    Definitely hardware accelerated 3D rendering.
  - Alice O'Connor
    
     reply
    October 5, 2011 1:13 AM
    
    GPU acceleration comes in with Flash 11: http://www.shacknews.com/article/70270/flash-11-bringing-gpu-accelerated-3d-in-october
- rick
  
   reply
  October 4, 2011 2:42 PM
  
  Considering that both Microsoft (for IE10/Windows 8) and Apple (for iOS) are set on not supporting Flash, is this even a good idea?
  - threeup
    
     reply
    October 4, 2011 2:43 PM
    
    win 8 doesn't have flash in the _metro_ version of IE, there is definitely support in the main version
    - GaratNW
      
       reply
      October 4, 2011 3:40 PM
      
      What three said. Plus, just because it doesn't support it right now doesn't mean it won't in the final version if Flash 11 fixes most of the memory and performance issues it had.
      
      Plus, I'm sure this is also setting the stage for HTML5 exporting, as soon as the standard actually is anywhere close to becoming a standard. Smart move, and can't wait to see flash/browser become a more serious platform.
      - Schnapple
        
         reply
        October 4, 2011 3:45 PM
        
        No I'm pretty sure the fact that it doesn't support it right now does mean it won't support it in the final version. They don't allow the Metro version of IE to run plugins at all. That's the whole idea - a fluid and crash-free experience for tablets.
    - rick
      
       reply
      October 4, 2011 4:59 PM
      
      Ahh, good to know.
    - jcupitt
      
       reply
      October 5, 2011 1:24 AM
      
      Metro is the main version, the desktop is legacy mode and is on the way to deprecation, I think.
      - [deleted] 1321357377
        
         reply
        October 5, 2011 1:28 AM
        
        [deleted]
      - Schnapple
        
         reply
        October 5, 2011 5:57 AM
        
        Haha, no. Metro is a streamlined interface for tablets. Microsoft is never going to depreciate the desktop Windows. Not if they want to maintain developer market share, which is way more important than making the consumers happy. Operating systems are not things that can be dumbed all the way down.
        
        [deleted] 1321357377
        
         reply
        October 5, 2011 6:11 AM
        
        [deleted]
- sebconn
  
   reply
  October 4, 2011 6:07 PM
  
  This could be a lifesaver for flash. Think of games like Quake Live, Battlefield F2P etc, you have to install separate plugins for each of those. If flash can become the standard for in browser 3D gaming, they're on a winner.
  - flasher 907
    
     reply
    October 4, 2011 7:06 PM
    
    I'm pretty sure those games aren't acutally running in browser though. The browser plugins are probably just some auto downloader to install the game executable and keep it up to date.
    - chekote
      
       reply
      October 4, 2011 10:28 PM
      
      The wording used by Epic says otherwise. This is the Unreal Engine running in Flash, not flash downloading an executable.
    - sebconn
      
       reply
      October 4, 2011 11:50 PM
      
      The only difference there is it's not embedded into the page. Flash is essentially an executable that loads remote data and displays it embedded on a page. Just because it's embedded in a webpage doesn't make it any less viable.
- EvilDolemite
  
   reply
  October 4, 2011 10:29 PM
  
  UT99 Live in-browser? who here would play that?
  - Sapiens
    
     reply
    October 4, 2011 11:04 PM
    
    I'd rather play UT99 not-in-a-browser, with the D3D10 renderer.
- Snipergen
  
   reply
  October 5, 2011 12:43 AM
  
  This is fucking huge and they want to say fuck you Unity now. Shiiiiiit this is big.
  - jcupitt
    
     reply
    October 5, 2011 1:21 AM
    
    Unity say they will run in flash rsn as well I think.