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Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

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Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#61

Post by azakai »

corysama wrote: post #59
chanon wrote: post #8

More info at: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/premium-fea... Specifically: Premium features licensing will only be needed when both of the following APIs are used in the same application run in Flash Player: * ApplicationDomain.domainMemory, which provides access to domain memory * Stage3D.request3DContext, if using hardware acceleration -- From the article, it looks like ApplicationDomain.domainMemo…

Well, shit... Alchemy+Stage3D is directly a competitor to NaCl+WebGL. By refusing to help NaCl become open-standards-worthy, Mozilla is going to end up watching Alchemy beat out NaCl (and Emscriptem) with a completely proprietary, revenue-shared (and therefore implicitly licensor-dependent) alternative.

> Well, shit... Alchemy+Stage3D is directly a competitor to NaCl+WebGL.

First of all, NaCl has little to do with WebGL. NaCl has it's own, non-web-standard way (like NaCl itself) to render 3D graphics. If you use NaCl, you likely do not use WebGL.

> By refusing to help NaCl become open-standards-worthy, Mozilla is going to end up watching Alchemy beat out NaCl (and Emscriptem) with a completely proprietary, revenue-shared (and therefore implicitly licensor-dependent) alternative.

Mozilla can't help NaCl become a relevant standard for the web, even if it wanted to. NaCl is still CPU-specific, still too complex and evolving to standardize and create alternate implementations of, and still will not be supported by browsers without plugins like the iOS browser and Windows 8 Metro.

Alchemy might beat out NaCl. It works in far more places than NaCl, but it's slower, so that will be interesting to watch. But I very much doubt Alchemy will beat 3D gaming on the open web. It isn't just Emscripten, it's also Mandreel and several other C++ to JS compilers in the industry. That approach reaches more people than even Alchemy, and it reaches them with 0 license fees.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#62

Post by Fargren »

neilmiddleton wrote: post #16

…and how exactly are Adobe going to know what 9 percent of net revenue for a given movie is?

It doesn't matter, since movies won't be using Stage3D or Alchemy. This will mostly monetize games made in Unity and UDK published for Flash.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#63

Post by joezydeco »

asto wrote: post #13

This move is currently getting HA-HA'ed here on HN but it's a fairly decent move. Some people have no choice but to use flash (mostly game-makers). Some of them, like Zynga rake in big money. Adobe looks like they might get a piece of that action. What's to laugh at?

If Unity could convince Chrome and Mozilla to add the Unity player plugin to those projects, then they don't need Flash at all.

In the meantime, it seems like a lot of unity devs are trying to figure out ways to get Facebook users to install the player through sneaky methods.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#65

Post by corysama »

azakai wrote: post #61
corysama wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, shit... Alchemy+Stage3D is directly a competitor to NaCl+WebGL. By refusing to help NaCl become open-standards-worthy, Mozilla is going to end up watching Alchemy beat out NaCl (and Emscriptem) with a completely proprietary, revenue-shared (and therefore implicitly licensor-dependent) alternative.

> Well, shit... Alchemy+Stage3D is directly a competitor to NaCl+WebGL. First of all, NaCl has little to do with WebGL. NaCl has it's own, non-web-standard way (like NaCl itself) to render 3D graphics. If you use NaCl, you likely do not use WebGL. > By refusing to help NaCl become open-standards-worthy, Mozilla is going to end up watching Alchemy beat out NaCl (and Emscriptem) with a completely proprietary, revenue-s…

OK, technically OpenGLES2 is the open-standard that the open-web-standard WebGL is based on. Still a big step in the right direction compared to Stage3D. Moving from ES2 to a C++ interface to WebGL would not be a huge pain at this point if someone pushed for it.

That's how Mozilla /can/ help NaCl become a relevant standard for the web. It's still evolving rapidly! That could be a good thing because it's far too complex and cpu-specific /now/. With Moz's participation, that evolution could be directed to something standardizable. It's a lot of work, but it's better than sitting back and watching Adobe take over without asking for anyone's support.

Right now, Alchemy runs at 40% of native speed. They are targeting 80% at public launch. We'll see how that goes... Meanwhile, I've dug deep into the performance of JS and I've been happy when I can get deeply-optimized JS to reach 10% speed compared to deeply-optimized native.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#66

Post by mikeocool »

SteveMcQwark wrote: post #40
mikeocool wrote: post #39

I wonder what counts as making net revenue with Flash that would cause this to kick in. Advertising agencies have been charging clients well over $50,000 to build flash sites for years. Are they going to have to start giving Adobe a 9% cut of everything made on their client work?

1. Flash sites won't be using the features in question. 2. Flash sites should die a horrible horrible death.

No disagreement here on the fact that flash sites should die a horrible death.

Regardless, many flash developers have been clamoring for true 3D rendering in flash for a long time, and hack it together with libraries like Paper Vision. Perhaps I missed something, but the article seems to suggest that these features will indeed be available in the browser plugin, and thus usable on flash sites.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#67

Post by azakai »

corysama wrote: post #65
azakai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, shit... Alchemy+Stage3D is directly a competitor to NaCl+WebGL. First of all, NaCl has little to do with WebGL. NaCl has it's own, non-web-standard way (like NaCl itself) to render 3D graphics. If you use NaCl, you likely do not use WebGL. > By refusing to help NaCl become open-standards-worthy, Mozilla is going to end up watching Alchemy beat out NaCl (and Emscriptem) with a completely proprietary, revenue-s…

OK, technically OpenGLES2 is the open-standard that the open-web-standard WebGL is based on. Still a big step in the right direction compared to Stage3D. Moving from ES2 to a C++ interface to WebGL would not be a huge pain at this point if someone pushed for it. That's how Mozilla /can/ help NaCl become a relevant standard for the web. It's still evolving rapidly! That could be a good thing because it's far too compl…

Mozilla can't make NaCl non-CPU specific. It's CPU specific by design. PNaCl, which tries to be portable, is a completely separate project (although the underlying SFI is similar), and it's too early to evaluate the performance there to see if it's worth it. So there is nothing Mozilla or Opera or anyone can do.

Deeply optimized JS should run much faster than 10x slower than native. Most benchmarks I've run on compiled code are 2x-6x slower than native. And that is before JS engines actually optimize specifically for that type of code, which is happening this year.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#68

Post by corysama »

azakai wrote: post #67
corysama wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, technically OpenGLES2 is the open-standard that the open-web-standard WebGL is based on. Still a big step in the right direction compared to Stage3D. Moving from ES2 to a C++ interface to WebGL would not be a huge pain at this point if someone pushed for it. That's how Mozilla /can/ help NaCl become a relevant standard for the web. It's still evolving rapidly! That could be a good thing because it's far too compl…

Mozilla can't make NaCl non-CPU specific. It's CPU specific by design. PNaCl, which tries to be portable, is a completely separate project (although the underlying SFI is similar), and it's too early to evaluate the performance there to see if it's worth it. So there is nothing Mozilla or Opera or anyone can do. Deeply optimized JS should run much faster than 10x slower than native. Most benchmarks I've run on compil…

The point is that Google isn't self-motivated enough to get an Open-PNaCl-Whatever in shape to be standardizable on their own. They need Moz and Opera to push them, not rebuke them.

I understand Moz's position. I'm just frustrated. Mozilla seems to be so proud to have finally reaching the point that we can run Super Nintendo games in the browser (http://browserquest.mozilla.org/) only 18 years after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND Meanwhile, Alchemy and NaCl can deliver a better-than-iPad3 user experience (zero install + sandboxed, etc) comparable to http://infinitybladegame.com/ to the browser today.

When I speak of deeply-optimized native, I'm talking about large volumes of tuned double-precision SSE vs tuned double-precision math in JS. If I were to cheat and do single-precision in SSE, it would be more like 20x. Moz is talking about adding a Matrix4x4 type to JS to make it easier for games to keep up. That seems to me like a patch to the larger problem of SIMD not making sense the context of JS.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#69

Post by azakai »

corysama wrote: post #68
azakai wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla can't make NaCl non-CPU specific. It's CPU specific by design. PNaCl, which tries to be portable, is a completely separate project (although the underlying SFI is similar), and it's too early to evaluate the performance there to see if it's worth it. So there is nothing Mozilla or Opera or anyone can do. Deeply optimized JS should run much faster than 10x slower than native. Most benchmarks I've run on compil…

The point is that Google isn't self-motivated enough to get an Open-PNaCl-Whatever in shape to be standardizable on their own. They need Moz and Opera to push them, not rebuke them. I understand Moz's position. I'm just frustrated. Mozilla seems to be so proud to have finally reaching the point that we can run Super Nintendo games in the browser ( http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ ) only 18 years after http://en.wikip…

> The point is that Google isn't self-motivated enough to get an Open-PNaCl-Whatever in shape to be standardizable on their own. They need Moz and Opera to push them, not rebuke them.

Opera, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple can't help Google push a standard that doesn't make sense for the web. I don't understand what you want them to do. Help from the other browser vendors can't magically fix the problems already mentioned with NaCl.

The only thing they can do, is ignore the principles of standardization and what is good for the web, and just drop NaCl into their browsers. That would be terrible though.

> Meanwhile, Alchemy and NaCl can deliver a better-than-iPad3 user experience (zero install + sandboxed, etc) comparable to http://infinitybladegame.com/ to the browser today.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6873971/data/cube2/index.html

And again, this is before actually optimizing for that kind of code. In a few months that will improve even more.

> When I speak of deeply-optimized native, I'm talking about large volumes of tuned double-precision SSE vs tuned double-precision math in JS.

That's true, for that kind of code JS is slow currently. Things like RiverTrail should help, but they are not close to ready yet.

Re: Adobe to charge Flash coders to use 'premium' features

#70

Post by corysama »

azakai wrote: post #69
corysama wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Google isn't self-motivated enough to get an Open-PNaCl-Whatever in shape to be standardizable on their own. They need Moz and Opera to push them, not rebuke them. I understand Moz's position. I'm just frustrated. Mozilla seems to be so proud to have finally reaching the point that we can run Super Nintendo games in the browser ( http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ ) only 18 years after http://en.wikip…

> The point is that Google isn't self-motivated enough to get an Open-PNaCl-Whatever in shape to be standardizable on their own. They need Moz and Opera to push them, not rebuke them. Opera, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple can't help Google push a standard that doesn't make sense for the web. I don't understand what you want them to do. Help from the other browser vendors can't magically fix the problems already mention…

What I want is to /eventually/ get PNaCl with WebGL/WebAudio/IndexDB/whatever APIs make Mozilla happy. I make high-end 3D apps to pay my bills. I want to bring them to the web. But, what I don't want is to go through Adobe's content approval process in order to not be 15 years behind the technology curve (Cube2=Quake2=1997).

JS+WebGL is great and I'll keep pounding on it. But, building JS into the world's VM because of the asteroid-like inertia behind JS is frustrating in a similar way to watching Intel bolt stuff on to a pocket calculator CPU (8086) until we get a CoreI7. It obviously /can/ work, but...

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