On Sunday, February 27, Adobe provided general access to the beta-version of Molehill 3D API and Flash Player 11. As part of the public presentation of these technologies, Adobe opened an AIR and Flash Player Incubator on labs.adobe.com. The site included public builds, documentation, and Flex SDK.

The first public Molehill release brings us closer to an exciting new era in the game industry, in which it will be possible to use sophisticated and modern graphics in browser-based applications. Molehill uses GPU for rendering, allowing developers to achieve higher performance in graphics drawing while utilizing shaders for dynamic lighting, particle systems, complex materials, post-effects and skeletal animation.

Part of these features and their evident advantages can be seen in the AlternativaPlatform-created MAX Racer showcase. First the video of this showcase was shown at Adobe MAX 2010. We built on MAX Racer on the Alternativa3D 8 graphics engine, which we have been developing since the fall of 2010.

MAX Racer is a racing prototype set near Los Angeles Convention Center. The player controls a sports car with the keyboard, steering wheel, joystick, or gamepad. Another demo of Molehill, built on Alternativa3D 8, soon will be available in the Showcase section at alternativaplatform.com. It is Ostrova Online. Both mentioned projects show great potential of Molehill 3D API.

"Molehill is the codename for a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that will provide the necessary power to deliver an advanced 3D experience using Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR. Visualization is achieved through DirectX, OpenGL and the software emulator SwiftShader. It operates on all popular OS and platforms including PC, notebooks, netbooks and mobile platforms, such as Android or iOS. GPU access gives Alternativa3D 8 the ability to draw more than 3 million polygons with high performance. Support of vertex and pixel shaders allows for modern special effects in lighting, shadows, particle systems, post-effects and more — all in a Flash environment", said AlternativaPlatform CTO Anton Volkov.

We created the Alternativa3D 8 for use on our own projects, including the browser-based online action Tanki Online 2.0. Third-party developers can use Alternativa 3D 8 free of charge, but are required to put in a link to alternativaplatform.com — that identifies AlternativaPlatform as the creator of the technology. A beta version of the engine will go public in April 2011.