Future of away3D

[Incubatio]

Knowing that flash version of away3D is not updated anymore, I think it would be wise to indicate it in the README.

Also, it could be nice to point that away3D has been ported to haxe on the repository openfl/away3d. (It even received few update / fixes).

As I still wish for an open source, cross platform game engine, and as I don't know what and how away3D Fundation and away3D community is doing, I invite people to join the #away3d channel on freenode to chat about it.

Also if there is already an effort on that matter, and if you need help, please contact me, i'd be happy to help.

[sfxworks]

I mean, it works. And it works well for AIR too. I do wonder where everyone is and if there any improvements that could be made... I do plan to use this in an existing project greater than I already am.

[Incubatio]

I think since adobe announced flash death, support have dropped (there is no official statement about this though).
Gonchar, member of the away fondation was working 4.2 version, an interesting refactoring that was going to add deferred rendering which would have been a huge improvement.
However he never finished it.

A lot is missing on away3D if you compare it to other framework and engine.
First there is no good shading langage (AGAL is a pain to write), and it would require a meaningful effort and the approval of the away association to integrate lang such as OGSL.

Also there are some thing that are a hassle to make work.
For instance the 3dsmax plugin to export a mesh to awd is only compatible with 3dsMax 2012.
I don't think the blender plugin ever worked properly.

About Aways3D tools:

• "Away builder" has few bugs and would need more feature (like integrating custom shaders, live coding shaders), but also is very difficult to update as it's using old flex version (as3 flex was dropped few years ago).

• "Sparticle" is not open source, again a lot more could be done there to improve things.
  Also sparticle require a web authentication to start, so the day its creator decide to close his website, the sparticle editor won't start without a crack / hack.

I could go on and on about this topic ...
If you just want to make a game, unity would be more efficient (time and performance wise) but also future proof.

I personally still want to work with open source framework though.
I think i'm gonna put my effort somewhere else, starting with https://github.com/armory3d/armory that looks very promising.

[jcyuan]

is the AwayJS an official WebGL version of Away3D?

[Incubatio]

@jcyuan you can find the answer yourself by checking the list of contributors of each repositories, which is simple to do with git, and even simpler with github.
There is also a team tab on the away3d website, that you can relate to.

[ageekhere]

It would be nice to see some more development or some news on future development, the last commit was on Feb 8, 2017 and there are 12 pull request sitting there.

How hard would it be to update the Flash Player from 12 to 28?

[therealloft]

when i get some time in a few months, i be doing a full refactor of away3d as a new engine geared towards gaming rather than just a render engine. I plan to add few improvements such as;

• FBX support
• Physic improvements (Using workers)
• Deferred Rendering
• Texture Async Uploading
• Navmeshes
• Materials Editor
• SSAO
• LOD groups
• Automatic ATF Texture converter
• Instance Drawing
• P2P Networking API (Using RTMP)

[pitanello]

I hope Away 3D development resumes now that Harman has given new life to Air

[therealloft]

Wouldn't hold your breath no updates for over four years, I've given up on it and switched to unity.

[varadig]

Switch to heaps

[pitanello]

I believe that the fact that Air is no longer free has given a good boost to its development and I am happy with that. For the moment for the 3d puzzles of my mobile games (my games are done in mixed 2D / 3D graphics) I am still using Away 3D and it works fine.

[Fancy2209]

Adobe cut the funding in early 2014, that's why there hasn't been a release since. Away is now focusing on AwayJS (formerly Away3D TS) and AwayFL