flashLicht

pmtolk · Post by **pmtolk** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:34 pm

I want to port irrlicht to flash into adobes new molehill project (I am not from adobe).
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/molehill/

I am willing to hire some people at their full hourly contract rate to do this and was wondering the difficulty level in this undertaking?

Also, all of the work will be released back to the irrlicht community!!!

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 10:52 pm

Interesting, I wonder why I've never heard of this technology before..

But to be honest, I do not think irrlichts architecture would be suited for a specific target like flash, since irrlichts architecture is built around abstracting away multiple low-level API's on multiple platforms, while flash is just a single cross-platform target

In my personal opinion, I think you would gain both efficiency and performance if you'd design an architecture directly built for this molehill project instead of porting irrlichts

Anyway, good luck!

pmtolk · Post by **pmtolk** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:11 am

I guess I am looking for the standard interface that irrlicht provides to the camera, and lighting and loading meshes or quake models and the like.

Also, since irrlicht abstracted away the low level api, then that could be a flash api with irrlicht like syntax controlling it?

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:27 am

I suppose you could try to 'port' the irrlicht scene management structure and some scene nodes over to the flash platform, but I have no idea how this molehill API will handle communication with the GPU, so the abstracting of textures, meshes, shaders and all those things irrlicht does could become troublesome

Also, since I'm not too familiar with flash, which language would this port be written in? I suppose it would need to use actionscript, which would be a pretty big conversion (if I remember correctly, the newer releases support OO designs right?)

Basically, this would become a complete rewrite of irrlicht in actionscript then, and wouldn't it be better to just design your own architecture while using irrlicht as a guideline? You could always 'translate' those techniques you need which are implemented in irrlicht to actionscript so you don't have to completely re-invent the wheel (the zlib license does allow this as far as I know)

Adler1337 · Post by **Adler1337** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 2:55 am

Coppercube

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 3:18 am

Adler1337 wrote:Coppercube

Well yeah, coppercube provides 3D support inside flash and WebGL, but I highly doubt it can achieve the same results as shown in the demo video on the adobe website

The molehill API is actually hardware accelerated, while coppercube is purely software based I believe

And coppercube is not free, nor does it have an open license like irrlicht does

niko · Post by **niko** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:29 am

Radikalizm wrote:
Adler1337 wrote:Coppercube
Well yeah, coppercube provides 3D support inside flash and WebGL, but I highly doubt it can achieve the same results as shown in the demo video on the adobe website

The molehill API is actually hardware accelerated, while coppercube is purely software based I believe

Well, I already have access to Molehill and ported the internal 3D engine of CopperCube to it, so once Molehill is public, it will fully utilize that.
And by the way: The 3d engine inside coppercube is pretty much what Irrlicht would look like when ported to ActionScript, because I wrote it.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:43 pm

niko wrote:
Radikalizm wrote:
Adler1337 wrote:Coppercube
Well yeah, coppercube provides 3D support inside flash and WebGL, but I highly doubt it can achieve the same results as shown in the demo video on the adobe website

The molehill API is actually hardware accelerated, while coppercube is purely software based I believe
Well, I already have access to Molehill and ported the internal 3D engine of CopperCube to it, so once Molehill is public, it will fully utilize that.
And by the way: The 3d engine inside coppercube is pretty much what Irrlicht would look like when ported to ActionScript, because I wrote it.

Oh ok, then I take back my previous statement

Adler1337 · Post by **Adler1337** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:44 pm

And coppercube is not free, nor does it have an open license like irrlicht does

I am willing to hire some people at their full hourly contract rate to do this and was wondering the difficulty level in this undertaking?

Who cares if it's free. The price pmtolk would pay to have someone do this is way more expensive than Coppercube.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:51 pm

Adler1337 wrote:
And coppercube is not free, nor does it have an open license like irrlicht does

I am willing to hire some people at their full hourly contract rate to do this and was wondering the difficulty level in this undertaking?
Who cares if it's free. The price pmtolk would pay to have someone do this is way more expensive than Coppercube.

You're right, I forgot about that

pmtolk · Post by **pmtolk** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 10:50 pm

I asked coppercube for help but they are too busy at the moment:) Would love to get them involved!!!

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 11:04 pm

pmtolk wrote:I asked coppercube for help but they are too busy at the moment:) Would love to get them involved!!!

Well, if I had the time and the actionscript experience I'd love to help you get set up with the engine, but sadly enough I don't have either of those