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chris.campbell
chris.campbell
Legend
July 25, 2017
Question

Locked by Moderator, Not on subject anymore,AIR Roadmap Update

  • July 25, 2017
  • 72 replies
  • 111052 views

Hello AIR developers,

With the news today regarding Flash Player, I'm sure many of you have questions regarding AIR and its future roadmap.  Let me start by saying that today's announcement was not about AIR, and instead focuses entirely on Flash Player and the browser plugin environment.  Adobe remains committed to AIR and we believe it continues to be a great desktop and mobile development platform.

Many of you have asked for a roadmap update.  We hope to have our official Flash Runtime roadmap updated soon, but until then I wanted to share some of the features we'd like to accomplish in our upcoming releases.  As always, this list may change as we receive feedback from the community.

  • Support for 64-bit AIR – Windows Captive Only
  • AIR SDK installer on Windows
  • Desktop async texture upload
  • DirectX11 support for AIR desktop
  • Increase the GPU memory texture limit
  • Improved monitor and resolution settings for AIR Desktop
  • GPU render mode for AIR Desktop
  • Support for the latest SDK on iOS 11 and Android O
  • ASTC Support for mobile
  • VR/AR support for AIR apps
  • ANE support for Swift on iOS
  • METAL bindings for Stage3D
  • Motion detection for Android devices

We've also been following a feature request thread on the Starling forums.  We wanted to get your feedback on some of the items outlined by the community.  If you'd like to provide additional input, please take a minute and take this three question survey so we can better understand what folks would like to see in future releases.

Community AIR Feature Requests​ Survey

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    72 replies

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    S
    SergiySev
    Participant
    July 26, 2017

    Ok, we can live without flash. But what about realtime video streaming (please don't advise HLS, Dash etc. it isn't "realtime").

    Any plans to support RTMP in HTML5/JS?

    C
    chaky
    Inspiring
    July 26, 2017

    Adobe AIR is awesome! Especially when you guys have put so much effort in creating AGAL and optimizing for an endless list of different Android devices. AIR has a real value now. Only if you would make effort to improve Flash Builder 4.7 that is working great when it don't crash. Flash Builder 4.7 works great but it crashes too often.

    Please make "Increase the GPU memory texture limit" a first feature that you will implement. Memory on the devices grow at astounding speed and mobile devices display resolutions are no joke either. And a limit of 512MB is really low today.

    From a noob perspective it does not look like that will be a complicated feature and it can give us so much more freedom.

    But just out of curiosity what are the problems of increasing memory limit. Why can't you just increase that flag to 1024   MB

    A
    ASWC
    Inspiring
    July 27, 2017

    You can increase the memory yourself, this is anyway required in modern OS as FB would be too unstable without that.

    FB hasn't been updated for years and will never be, that's the simple answer. Adobe will eventually stop offering it as a downloadable probably when they drop AIR.

    As for the AIR framework it is coasting like it has been doing for the past few years until the plug is pulled by Adobe. When will that be depends on how active is the community and the willingness of Adobe. Do not forget, there are NO budget and plans to support Windows 10 packaging and it's fair to say there will never be any budget and plans to support any new platform coming along. AIR is coasting until it becomes irrelevant. Adobe will apply to AIR the same policy it did to Flash, letting it go until it can't go anymore.

    I recommend for everyone to start looking at ways to convert their existing code base to something else. I did and now I still use Flash and AIR but I export my code base to other technology as well.

    B
    Born2code
    Known Participant
    July 27, 2017

    I just hope (and expect) Adobe to ultimately open source AIR.

    I can only imagine the class action law suits that would take place if AIR was dropped, when millions of dollars are dependent on it.

    And so I think the long term goal for Adobe will be to open source the technology so it can continue and flourish by the community.

    S
    ShaunOverton
    Participant
    July 26, 2017

    chris.campbell​ Can we expect any improvements to CPU rendering / the classic DisplayList for Adobe AIR (given that its from the flash core, is there now going to be an opportunity to improve those areas that are shared)? If not, are there plans to make development with Stage3D or similar as easy as it is to do now with Vector based design from Animate/Flash Professional? I ask as I represent a non-profit project that has worked with Flash and more recently AIR for many many years now and Vector based drawing is extremely important to us. Alternatively, our only option is to move to HTML5 which we really don't want to do given the disruption to our current workflow.

    In addition, we feel that Flash/AIR is great and we want to see it to get better and to grow. Without it, our long-standing project would be dead.

      natural_criticB837
      natural_criticB837
      Legend
      July 26, 2017

      chris.campbell​ We would pledge what I consider a substantial amount of money to Air if we get an HTML target in return (say 5 digits a year), and we are probably not the only ones. Feel free to contact me if that is something you would like to discuss further.

      Kind regards,
      Ruben

        L
        ljb2411
        Participant
        July 26, 2017

        I knew this day was coming, but it was still sad news. I am so grateful for my time creating content for Flash. My first introduction to the Flash world was Flash 4. Flash and ActionScript made me want to be a programmer. After using it, I actually changed my degree to CS. Thanks for all of the work Macromedia and Adobe team members! I still develop AIR apps and hope it continues to have a bright future. Are there any plans to update Flash Builder? Maybe it could get a name change to AIRBuilder. There have been a lot of updates to Eclipse that would be nice to have in Flash Builder. I'm excited for ANE support for Swift. Keep up the good work!

          santanuk76005047
          santanuk76005047
          Participant
          July 26, 2017

          I really loved a few features listed here and looking forward for upcoming release!

          • Support for 64-bit AIR – Windows Captive Only
          • Support for the latest SDK on iOS 11 and Android O
          • VR/AR support for AIR apps
          • ANE support for Swift on iOS (WOW!)

          Thank you!

          Ruly
          Ruly
          Participant
          July 26, 2017

          I have several android air app for education,.. it's download my swf module regularly.. so after the death of flash player, will SDK can publish SWF file for my Android AIR App?

          marchbold
          marchbold
          Inspiring
          July 26, 2017

          Hey Chris,

          Great to hear the commitment to AIR!

          Love to hear more on the VR/AR plans!? We've invested a bit in this side of AIR already so really interested in what the runtime will be providing!     

          air native extensions // https://airnativeextensions.com
          KramSurfer2
          KramSurfer2
          Inspiring
          July 25, 2017

          Thanks for this update!

          A
          aellerts2
          Participant
          July 25, 2017

          Hi Chris,

          Thank you for keeping us informed. I see in the roadmap that VR/AR is on the list. This is good news. Can you elaborate what that might look like further?  Also, can Adobe please begin serious promotion of AIR again? I am not dismayed by the announcement because I think your team has done a good job with translating Animate to a web standards output tool. The Web as we have known it is fading away anyway. It is clear that AR is the next Web--and that it will supplant our current mobile experiences. PLEASE, get some of your talented team to blue sky something wonderful in AIR and AR, and then promote it everywhere. Here is an opening for again making the tool a leader in the field of emerging interactive experiences.

          E
          eduardo12fox
          Inspiring
          July 25, 2017

          For dews
          I understand dews that Apache Flex is not available for a business application. Another problem is: Do you really believe that AIR will continue? It may end sooner or later.

          D
          dews
          Inspiring
          July 25, 2017

          eduardo12fox  wrote

          For dews
          I understand dews that Apache Flex is not available for a business application. Another problem is: Do you really believe that AIR will continue? It may end sooner or later.

          The Flex framework is still a viable platform for a business application.  It's just that Stage3D is really the way to go, so that's Starling and the UI components from Feathers, in my opinion the better option.

          The Apache Flex team have been working on a port to HTML5/JS that's really promising, so you can still code using the Flex Framework and use Apache FlexJS to output your APP into HTML5/JS and voila you have a Web APP that is no longer reliant on the Flash plugin.

          As far as my belief in AIR - I honestly do believe in the future of AIR.  As born2code said:

          Born2code wrote

          It is still by far the best cross platform / GPU powered dev environment and I just wish Adobe would spend more money marketing AIR properly, as many devs are simply not aware that AIR is superior in many ways to HTML5, Unity and other cross OS runtimes today.

          I couldn't agree more.  Now that Flash is out of the way this may free Adobe up to start a more aggressive marketing campaign. Perhaps a new name for AIR to get away from Flash completely? If developers actually knew how good AIR was we'd start to see the community grow in a huge way, particularly when support for wearables is on the table. There are so many ECMAScript coders out there - if they only realized what they were missing with AS3.

          Harbs.
          Harbs.
          Legend
          July 26, 2017

          dews  wrote

          Now that Flash is out of the way this may free Adobe up to start a more aggressive marketing campaign. Perhaps a new name for AIR to get away from Flash completely?

          I hope the team at Adobe seriously considers this.

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