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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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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After struggling to master the recently released, open-source Sandy 3D API for Flash, I’ve decided to take another look at 3D programming in Director. Sandy appealed to me because it allowed real-time 3D in Flash. It was also appealing to have access to the source code and thus complete and precise programmatic control. The Sandy 3D API is very impressive. It blows away every other 3D programming effort in Flash that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps most importantly of all, the Flash plug-in has more market penetration than the Director plug-in. But I’ve found Sandy difficult to learn – more so than I had expected. This may reflect more upon me than upon Sandy.

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Sandy’s Blog announced that version 0.3 of the Sandy Flash 3D API is coming soon. Some features from OpenGL may be added to it. It already incorporates some features from the Java 3D API.

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If you’ve ever wanted to be able to do sophisticated real-time 3D programming in Flash, now you can. There’s now an open-source Flash 3D API called Sandy available to the Flash coding community. Currently in its second version, it’s based to an extent on the Java 3D API. Downloads, tutorials and demos – as well as news and updates – are available on Sandy’s blog.