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Adobe Alchemy port

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 5:09 pm
by lobolife
Are there any future plans to port Ogre3d to flash using Adobe Alchemy | http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy/ ?

Re: Adobe Alchemy port

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 5:40 pm
by Praetor
Alchemy is very misleading for many. Here's the general rule: you cannot do anything with alchemy that Flash cannot already do right now. Here's an example.

Say I wanted to have a 3D spline class in AS3. I could manually port it from Ogre's source. Or, with alchemy, I can have the AS3 generated right from the C++ for me. I cannot, however, magically gain 3D DirectX-based rendering from the use of alchemy. AS3 has none of the access to the video card Ogre needs, and alchemy cannot change that fact.

Re: Adobe Alchemy port

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 5:59 pm
by lobolife
Praetor,

Thanks for the reply! That definitely sheds some light on the issue. Do you think PixelBender | http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbender/ would be able to handle some of the video card features ogre needs?

Re: Adobe Alchemy port

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:21 pm
by Kencho
lobolife wrote:Praetor,

Thanks for the reply! That definitely sheds some light on the issue. Do you think PixelBender | http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbender/ would be able to handle some of the video card features ogre needs?
I can assure you it can't. PixelBender is basically a very limited pixel shader. It's quite good to do certain effects, but it lacks a lot of functionality of today's common pixel shader languages, and is bond to non-convolution (you work on a per-fragment basis; no going back to already processed pixels).

Re: Adobe Alchemy port

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 7:12 pm
by Praetor
It handles some, but not enough to be meaningful. Alchemy's entire purpose is to ease the process of porting the massive amount of functionality in libraries for C++. Since pushing AS3 and Flash as a programming environment (instead of just a designer's tool) Adobe has run up against the classic problem of not enough good libraries available. C++ has tons. So they figured they'd make it as easy as possible to port things as possible. However, you are still limited by Flash's environment and capabilities.