There is finally a 3D physics engine for Flash. Called WOW-Engine, it is still under development. It extends Alec Cove’s APE 2D engine, uses the Sandy library for all 3D math and incorporates data structures classes written by polygonal labs. It’s a very promising beginning. The future of Flash 3D programming and game development looks brighter and brighter. At least if Director ends up dying after all, there will now be a viable alternative, especially considering that the Havok 3D physics engine for Director has not been updated since Director MX 2004, and Adobe and Havok do not appear to formed any new partnerships.

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Emmy Huang writes that, “Yes, Virginia, there will be a Flash Player 9 for Linux.”

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In “Worrying About Flash 9 for Linux“, a Linux user worries that Adobe will break another promise to the Linux community about releasing an updated version of Flash for Linux. He notes that Linux users have not been able to download an updated Flash player since Flash 7. He suspects that, just as Adobe’s promises to release Flash 8 player for Linux never materialized, their Flash 9 player promises may be equally empty.

The Sandy 1.0 beta has been released. Sandy is a Flash 3D API, and there’s nothing else like it, if you want to be able to do real-time 3D rendering in Flash. I’ve tried almost everything else that is available on the internet for Flash 3D, and nothing else goes so far beyond being a toy demo. I’ve tried out the first and the second releases of Sandy, too, and it just keeps getting better. One change in this release is that now it’s possible to draw curved faces. Another is the addition of an ASE parser. The remaining changes can be read here.

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Lately, I have been researching methods of animation, IK, physics simulations, etc. in Flash. After reading this tutorial on using verlet integration for advanced character physics, I was happy to find the Flade open source Flash dynamics engine for simulating 2D physics using verlet integration. Now I need to get it working in three dimensions.

I’ve reached the conclusion that I really need to know everything. I actually tried to talk my mother into allowing me to drop out of school at age sixteen, giving her examples of actresses, writers and musicians who had been high-school drop-outs. I finished high school and then college, but I never took more math than I had to take. I used to ask my mother why I needed to know algebra. I would have prefered not to take it at all, in high school. Oh, how I now regret than I never took a geometry or a trigonometry class. Not only is trig heavily used in cool and innovative Flash generative art like that you can find in books like Flash Math Creativity or on sites like Levitated. It’s also difficult to begin to understand the basics of 3D rotation coding constructs, without learning trig.

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After reading a scientific article on Gizmodo about researchers who came up with a method of altering pictures to make them resemble what they think babies would see, Mario on the Quisomondo blog made a Flash baby vision simulator.

When I stumbled across Jim’s Flash Bestiary, I felt like a kid in a toy store. Jim’s got examples of circles and kaleidescopes, natural phenomena and fractals, physical simulations, oddments, mazes and labyrinths, fun with text and classic games. His classic games includes Flash implementations of Asteroids, Frogger and Pong. His physical simulations includes a Flash version of sodaplay. For each of these examples, there’s a link to download the Flash file with all the source code. Not only is Jim generous with his demos, he is also generous with his advice in the Flash Kit forums.

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Now you can make your spam into a work of art. Forward a spam email to spam@spamrecycling.com. You’ll receive a link to your personal spam recycling Flash web app. You can get as artistic as you want. When you’re satisfied with the way it looks, you can have the spam recycler email a screenshot to you. According to the Quasimondo blog, it’s a test of the Flash 8 BitMapExporter class. Well, it’s a very creative test.

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I like this pageflip Flash script. It allows you to grab page corners and drag them to simulate turning the pages of a book. At first, I thought I would stay away from things like this, because they seem to be trying to replicate the book-reading experience on the web, which requires more imaginative development of its unique possibilities. Since then, I’ve envisioned how I think I’ll use it, which won’t stop at static text and images sitting on the pages. I believe that I’ll essentially use it as an interface. It’ll be a good way to provide very usable navigation and organization.

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