Google and Unity3D (has Adobe missed the boat?)
Back in August Google aquired On2, makers of the vp6 video codec used in the flash player in flash player 8. I noted at the time this had to be Google’s answer to the horrible codec wars the browser were all facing with HTML5, and opensourceing a codec would be the only answer. Today at Google’s IO event we got our answer.
So its time I pose another question. Today in Google’s IO event Unity3D played a small yet impressive part. Displaying native 3d in the browser (chrome of course) without a plugin, 3d on Android. Ill be blunt…. what are the chances of Google trying to aquire Unity3D to make an open 3d browser standard for others to adopt, in a similar way to the On2 acquisition.
Next question… Did Abode miss the boat. Roll back to december last year and some rather high profile flashers were saying Adobe should buy Unity3d. This stemmed from the fact they had been wanting 3D capabilities for so long and Adobe didn’t seem willing to offer them. I thought the same. I have seen clients consider 3d and try to achieve their dreams in the flash player but to be honest your dreams don’t have to be that big before the flash player falls short. But at the same time the Unity3D plugin didn’t have the install base for them to be comfortable. I saw at least a partnership as a perfect arrangement.
This is all based on that fact that the owners of Unity3D would be open to a partnership/acquirement, as I don’t think its a publicly traded company (correct me if Im wrong). Which may be why we see more of a partnering with google, but history shows, thats just not how Google rolls.
Regardless of all of this the guys at Unity3D have done an awesome job of bringing an awesome tool to the market, at the right time, with the right features. I am sure that if they continue to deliver the solution both developers and the people paying the developers want they will do fine on their own. If someone from Unity reads this please feel free to comment on your visions of 3d on the web past plugins.
Adobe’s disinterest in real-time, hardware accelerated 3D has been a mystery to me. If they don’t do it, some other company will.
Not “disinterest” so much as deep experience. I came in for “Smart 3D”, the realtime 3D engine built upon MacroModel and Extreme 3D (but which never went anywhere). VRML seemed too talky-talky to deliver anything, but I expected Shockwave 3D to have more of an effect than it did. Adobe Acrobat has the next generation of that engine and is heavily used for manufacturing manifests, but it’s not a gaming engine.
The hard thing about 3D tooling is that the goalposts keep changing, because there is great diversity in needs labeled “3D”. Open to it, but history proves expectations are often high.
jd/adobe
@john Yes but the 3d engine in acrobat was a partnership with RightHemisphere in New Zealand (who I used to work for) I cant see why the flash player didn’t do something similar, leaving another company to be the kicker for the moving goals.
Nice post dude. Not sure how i missed it. Im one of those developers whos 3D aspirations quickly found Flash lacking, and has since moved to Unity to achieve my goals. And holy shit what a blast!!
So yes these developments with Google and native support are very exciting.
Did Adobe miss the boat here? I say hell yes. Whilst theres been some very clever things done with Papervision and Away3D, theres just no comparison with what can be achived with Unity.
Did Adobe miss the boat? I would say yes, but I’m not sad that they did. Unity seems to be doing fine without them.
I think thats an understatement, they are doing great without them. I guess I am coming at it from a jealous flash developer wanting unity type 3d inside the flash player, and the only way I see that happening is if Adobe aquire someone. But unity are doing great things on thier own definately
3D engine is awesome, nice post.