Adobe has announced the release of Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3, which it says will "enable the next generation of immersive application experiences" across multiple platforms, including the web and popular mobile and desktop operating systems.
Of late, Flash's direction appears to be shifting from enabling basic components that web standards can now deal with (simple animation and interactivity) to more complex online tasks, and so Adobe's press release suitably cites these "milestone" releases as delivering major advantages in the fields of gaming, media and data-driven apps.
The company calls the updated products the "game console for the Web," claiming they will "allow game publishers to instantly deliver console-quality 2D and 3D games over the Internet to nearly all PCs and many other devices". Adobe reckons the full hardware-accelerated rendering for 2D and 3D graphics enables performance a thousand times faster than Flash Player 10 and AIR 2.
Additionally, media companies will be able to use the technology to "seamlessly deliver protected feature-length, cinema-quality HD video," while developers can create "sophisticated, data-driven applications with back-end systems integration across devices".
According to Adobe, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be publicly available in early October. Flash Builder and Flex will offer support for the new features in an upcoming release before the end of the year.
