MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo

This past Monday, we had the privilege of having a Papervision3D demo shown as an AS2/AS3 speed comparison at FlashForward/Macworld expo by Grant Skinner and apparently, it went really well. Grant likes to give lots of notice with things like this (4 days?) and well, I just happened to be working on a space demo for Paperworld game engine we’re all cookin’ up over at the PV3D list.

Basically, they needed to find a sample of something showing a stark contrast between Actionscript2 and Actionscript3 and they needed it to be visually stunning. Well, I’d seen the differences myself, but I had no idea *how* well it would perform with many models in a scene. So, I told Grant to give me an evening, run some tests to make sure it’s what he’d be looking for. I spent the next 8 hrs, and a good half of the weekend with my jaw on the floor at the performance – I couldnt’ stop starring at it. I’d been waiting 8yrs+ to see Flash do, what I was seeing it do – I still can’t hardly believe it!

The first test was to put the Xwing model (949 faces) into an as2 container and see how it performed. It stayed around 2-8fps on average and rotating it was a joke. Very klunky to say the least. So, I figured if AS3 could smoothly render the xwing with a star field and a death star in the back ground, that’d be a sweet demo. What I ended up with was 100x’s better than I could have imagined. I can’t really take credit for the end result – Grant pretty well had an idea of what he thought would be a good demo and that’s how you see what you see ;)

7 Xwings, 7 Ties, Death Star, Endor and a fully rendered star field in PV3D and it ran at a staggering 26-30fps on my laptop ;) Yeah, we had a good contrast demo. Then I attached a TargetCamera to the ships as a follow cam and made the ships clickable so you could jump from ship to ship and follow along as they flew back and forth and I finally realized – Flash doesn’t look like flash anymore :)

Also note, that while there is some image skewing of objects as they go away from center, that’s in no way a limitation of Papervision3D. On the contrary, that shows you the control you actually have over focus and zoom of the camera object. I just ran out of time to play with it and get it right.

View it online – BUT GO FULLSCREEN – it seems to play better at fullscreen. Just click the bottom right button in the corner.

Download the files from the link below and play around with it. On just about eveyrone’s system that’s tried the demo, it’s run between 15-30fps.

Falcon3D.swf – click and drag around the scene to move the camera view
Falcon3D_cameraFollow.swf – attaches a target camera to the last xwing created. Click on any ship in the scene to switch targets

AS2 – 949 Faces :: 2-8fps
Chugs when rotating the single Xwing

AS3 – 8107 Faces :: 20-30fps
Plays smoothly at full scree with 7 xwings, 7 ties, Death Star, Endor and fully rendered star field by Papervision3D!

Download Demos

32 Responses to “MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo”

  1. plugisto Says:

    sounds awesome.
    but something seems to be missing in your demo. there’s only the starfiled, no xwing and nothing showing up.
    i am using flash player 9, safari 2, osx 10.4.8, mac pro.

  2. Tristan Hauser Says:

    Time for someone to develop X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter II on Flash! It just blows me away. Great work.

  3. boostworthyisryantaylor Says:

    [...] Meanwhile at the Flash Forward keynote, Grant Skinner and John Grden presented a wonderful AS2/AS3 performance comparison using the Papervision3D engine. The AS2 test featured one X-Wing model with 900 faces that averaged 5 frames per second. The AS3 test featured 7 X-Wing’s, 7 Tie-Fighters, the Death Start, and Endor for a total of 8000 faces, and guess what….25 frames per second. Amazing. You can find out more about the two demos and download them on John Grden’s blog here. No comments [...]

  4. Joan Garnet Says:

    Very fast indeed…
    It would be nice to have a speed/features comparsion table between Sandy and Papervision.

  5. sascha/hdrs Says:

    Two words: AWE SOME!!
    The pilot seems to be a bit drunken though! ;)

  6. Pete Says:

    very very impressive indication of whats in store for flash this year. Fantastic work John. Now, let us into those tie fighters so I can crush those rebel scum ;)

  7. BrokenBlog » Blog Archive » Actionscript 3.0 is Very Fast Says:

    [...] Let’s face it though, numbers don’t do this kind of thing justice. But this animation does (via gBlog). It’s the live 3D rendering of a several ships, with well over 8000 polygons. The speed seems to vary unpredictably, but usually sticks to around 13fps or 30fps on my computer. Compare that to the as2 example, which runs at 3fps while rendering less than 1000 polygons. It’s not just faster, it’s a different level entirely. The demo is not perfect, but the 3D quality roughly matches the original Playstation. [...]

  8. Step Schwarz Says:

    I can also confirm the starfield-only glitch with OmniWeb. Does work in Camino and gets between 7-10fps on my Dual G4 (which isn’t bad at all). The as2 demo beachballs Camino. Go go as3!

  9. John Grden Says:

    If you’re only seeing a starfield and no other models, load the swf into the Flash Stand Alone player rather than a browser. I’ll be putting up links for the browser demo today

    go here to get the latest stand alone debug player (They call it a projector, so don’t just get the plugin)

  10. Ontamos.net » 3d en Flash 9 Says:

    [...] MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo [...]

  11. Die coolste Flash 3D Demo in AS 3.0 - unglaublich » Blog Flash Actionscript CMS Typo3 WPF Ajax | Büro zweigang Braunschweig Says:

    [...] Es gibt dort einen Download von zwei verschiedenen Versionen – vergleiche AS 2.0 mit AS 3.0 – Der Performanceunterschied ist enorm… 2-8fps versus 26 – 30 fps!!! Blogbeitrag StarWars 3D Demo in PV3D [...]

  12. randy Says:

    I just read the post again and realized you could switch ships in the follow cam mode! Awsome! Just wasted a half hour going from Republican to Democrat and back again! Any chance we can sneak a peak at the Force, I mean, Source code? I have a Millenium Falcon I would love to get into the Fray.

  13. John Grden Says:

    hehe yah! I’ll release the code after this next update with the latest version of PV3D. Carlos basically rewrote much of the engine and we’ve got some cool features of the Star Wars demo we’re hoping to get done and then release the code.

    Things like “cockpit” view and chase as well as flight controls ;) SHHHHHH, don’t tell anyone…

  14. randy Says:

    That is just sick, I am building what I thought was a fairly cool UI and you guys are just busting every preconception the web has held about flash for the past 8 years! I can’t wait to play catch up!

  15. John Grden Says:

    man that’s exactly it – I couldn’t have said it better! I’ve been waiting 8+ yrs for realtime 3D in Flash and it’s finally here. 2007’s gonna see some incredible stuff ;)

  16. Min Thu Says:

    That is absolutely cool in Flash!

  17. Najam D. Says:

    Just wanted to say this is amazing! I do allot of stuff on 3d and flash and had always wanted to mix the 2 and seems like now we are going to be having the tools to do just that. :) AMAZING!

  18. Steve Says:

    Very impressive.

  19. Steven Hargrove : Flash, Finally in 3D Says:

    [...] This has pretty much been a far-fetched concept that I have been wanting to see dome with flash for a long time. [...]

  20. ZOKII BLOG » Blog Archive » Papervision3D demo in Flash AS3 Says:

    [...] For more information, please visit John Grden Blog . [...]

  21. swf.com.tw » 目前最酷的Flash 3D引擎:PaperVision3D Says:

    [...] 底下這張星際大戰範例圖片,取自RockOnFlash網站,您還可以從該網頁下載ActionScript 2.0和3.0的示範檔(分別適用於Flash 8和Flash 9播放器,約2.5MB大小,解壓縮後播放時,可按著滑鼠拖曳改變視角),或者直接在線上觀看。 [...]

  22. PaperVision 3D looks amazing - Flashmagazine « Flash Enabled - Get Ready With Flash… Says:

    [...] Some months ago, John Grden published a couple nice demos that really proved that real 3D in Flash was not a dream and what difference AS3 and the new AVM makes. For Grant Skinners recent presentation at FlashForward MacWorld, John put together a demo showing a 3D space battle with X-wings and Tie Fighters flying around in realtime. (He recently updated it so that you can control the X-wing yourself). [...]

  23. g-fighter.com » blog archive » apollo and as3 — down for the get down Says:

    [...] what i have been playing with is actionscript 3. it would seem adobe is doing it right this time. packages and classes as they should be: everything in its place and a place for everything, means that my cs degree is coming in handier than i would’ve thought. initially i was worried about the overhead, but other than a lot of restructuring its not so different—well, in terms of coding that is. the performance on the other hand feels light years ahead. par example: x-wing as2/as3 comparison. the app we’re building is very visually intensive and has lots of motion and interactivity. effects that would surely have brough as2 to a crawl now seem to chug along at just the right pace. applying these effects, when leveraged with flex, is also a vast improvement of pure as2. flex’s built in effects (zoom, rotate, fade, etc) work right out the box. so by extending the UIComponent class, you’ve all of a sudden got yourself a whiz-bang animatable thing (whatever it may be…) that can actually keep up in a real world situation. props adobe, props. [...]

  24. Flash9 AS3 « DAAP digital design Says:

    [...] Read about it on his blog here. [...]

  25. ScatteredGenius.com » AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo Says:

    [...] I didn’t go looking for examples until recently, (I just took a Flash class this weekend to learn me some CS3 and AS3), but ho-le-shit. Basically, they needed to find a sample of something showing a stark contrast between Actionscript2 and Actionscript3 and they needed it to be visually stunning. Well, I’d seen the differences myself, but I had no idea *how* well it would perform with many models in a scene. So, I told Grant to give me an evening, run some tests to make sure it’s what he’d be looking for. I spent the next 8 hrs, and a good half of the weekend with my jaw on the floor at the performance – I couldnt’ stop starring at it. I’d been waiting 8yrs to see Flash do, what I was seeing it do – I still can’t hardly believe it! [...]

  26. links for 2007-08-28 « Rob Edwards: Collection of my daily bookmarks: roedward Says:

    [...] RockOnFlash m/ :: John Grden » MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo [...]

  27. RockOnFlash m/ :: John Grden » MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo » Rendition Multimedia Says:

    [...] RockOnFlash m/ :: John Grden » MacWorld AS2/AS3 Speed Comparision Demo [...]

  28. Ardis Creative Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Get the Ants off Your Site! Says:

    [...] Interactive 3D for the web is also taking off. It is possible to have a completely 3D website, application, or game. We all know how much more fun video games are in 3D than the old two dimensional ones. It allows for far more stimulating and interesting designs because designers can take advantage of seemingly infinite space and are not confined to the old rectangular and abrupt mediums. [...]

  29. Adobe Alchemy, is it ActionScript heresy ? Says:

    [...] one of the displays of the game changer was Papervision3D, in which I got involved quite early on. John Grden’s early demo using Papervision3D running on AS3 was an incredible testament to the speed of the AVM2. Now, that demo was built using ActionScript 3 [...]


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