Adobe has moved past Flash 10 technology for the first time with the posting of a Flash 11 beta and a corresponding AIR 3 beta. The two introduce Stage3D, a set of programming standards for “low-level” graphics acceleration. Nicknamed “Molehill,” they allow for more advanced 3D in the plugin as well as better 2D performance.
The code is now 64-bit native on Linux, Macs, and Windows PCs. Audiovisual compression takes extra precedence as it can now encode H.264 video when sending it out from a webcam as well as compress audio into the same G.711 format used by traditional phone lines to save the trouble of converting during a VoIP call to a real number.
Smaller touches include cubic Bezier curve rendering, support for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), the ability to generate random secure numbers, and vector printing on Linux. AIR 3 brings many of the same features as Flash 11 in an offline format.
Adobe is lacking on hard requirements for Flash 11 but, for AIR 3, needs at least an Intel Core Duo Mac running Snow Leopard or Lion, or a 1.6GHz Atom (2.33GHz desktop chip) Windows PX using at least XP. The company hasn’t said how soon it expects final releases of either software.
