I wish there was a native 3d API in the flash player…. but the first step for the Adobe boys and girls will be hardware acceleration (which they are reportedly working on). So for now we will have to make do with libraries like Sandy3D and now Janus if its a desktop application. 

The next release of Janus which includes this functionality is scheduled for Monday the 15th of Janurary. 

Thats right Janus now supports 3d. And being an ex RightHemisphere employee Im happy to announce its virtually the same 3d viewer that you will find in Adobe Acrobat 3D. So what have they done? Well basically they have wrapped the 3D viewer ActiveX and given direct access to the viewers API from within flash. The viewer can load roughly about 89% of the 3d formats out there so its useable in alot of situations. So if your looking down the barrel of a flex project that has to load and view 3d models and interact with the models Janus has the answer.

The boys at Janus have posted a few quick examples for now but I understand they will be posting somemore soon. And with over 1200 commands available there must be alot of examples. 

I also understand there might be some USB interfaces in the works. This will basically allow hardware to be interfaced directly with the flash player, detecting digial and analog signals from a USB device. So if your a hardware g33k like me you can start to write libraries to control or read from some of the cool USB devices out there.