I got a comment on my last post from a fellow Kiwi flash developer. Jono. He pointed me to his entry into the International Flash developers derby. Its a 3D engine called SWFZ. And it sounds like it wasnt an easy road to such a great looking dancing yellow dinosaur.

"SWFZ engine is the result of four years of me messing with 3D in Flash."

He had noticed my love of flash and 3D, but rather than bore you woth the details of what it can and cant do, head on over and check it out. http://www.custommedia.co.nz/swfz/

The sky box renders out with little to none distortion. I can see this going places if it can take all the ushall camera movement inputs. 

He hasnt got his website up and running at the moment so if you have any comments for Jono leave them here and he can pick them up. After all his work it would be great to get some feed back.

Its a 3d engine that sounds like it can parse Quake scenes and display animation. Tip if you wait 10 secs or so and the dinosaur stops dancing you can control the view using your mouse. I think if Jono can produce a few more example scenes that are interactive hes in with a really good chance of winning. I am wondering if he will take his place in the leauge of extraordinary flash gentlemen and release it to open source one day? He comments in his documentation that it has 171 classes, which is alot to let go of so Im picking we wont see it on OSFlash anytime soon. Props to Jono for busting out a great example of the power and speed of flash 9. Lets see Javascript do this. And for some reason I really really want to see Barney the dinosaur break out the running man and the washing machine to that music…..too many late nights I spose. Well done Jono!