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

[chris.campbell]

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

[rewb0rn]

I'd rather pay 30-50k for licences in unity and have all bugs fixed within a month. I believe that any serious developer feels the same.

While I don't share the same pessimism and I am positive that Air will be supported for the coming years, I would sign this statement any time. It is a real shame that Adobe is unable to understand this. Create a standalone website for Air that bundles all resources in one place, create a license model that generates monthly revenue for bigger companies, add an ANE / asset store => infinite moneys.

I wonder if it would be possible to acquire Air from Adobe to develop a business around it.

[ASWC]

In said it multiple times but maybe not clearly, the technology is NOT the problem. The technology is NOT the reason me and my company (on my advice) are moving away from AIR. The problem is Adobe commitment, it's a commitment for "update as long as it's reasonable" then "don't ask for new features" then "ok now it's costing too much so we pull the plug". Indie developers can afford to wait for the end or not believe in it, companies can't.

[Frédéric C.]

I really, really, REALLY think we got your point now.

[davidrenelt]

It is a problem that Adobe makes zero money of the tech. With Animate Adobe is trying to regain the space of "AD Banner Creation" where the whole business model of Flash resided in. Adobe is ofc in the position where every company developing graphically rich content simply has to have the CC package anyways. But in board meetings i'm sure that the question comes up from time to time, what Flash/AIR is doing for sales. The re brand of Flash to Animate tells the story what the answer to that question was.

It is probably the ignorance of the board members that keeps AIR alive as a legacy aspect of Animate. But let's not kid ourselves, all of the people using AIR as platfrom will still have a CC subscription after an announced death of AIR. I fully expect them to pull the plug at some point. It's not going to be in the hands of the AIR Dev team.

[rewb0rn]

Well that's the point. It would be super easy to monetize Air with a proper strategy and small effort, it just seems that they have no interest to do that or no understanding for the potential.

[ASWC]

Exactly, if AIR was in the hand of let's say Google or Unity, does anyone really think AIR would be at the exact same point today? I really don't think so, I think we would have ASNext already (and under extensive dynamic development), AIR would support all relevant platforms, it will be better, faster, easier to work with, it would have a dedicated and very good IDE, etc .... And tons of people would want to work with it, plenty of jobs for it. And that's really how I personally come to the realization that Adobe is just managing AIR, that's all they do, and waiting for a good moment/excuse to pull the plug. It's gonna be "sorry the technology is obsolete now and not very relevant anymore and we have decided to stop supporting it, also we won't give it to open source cos it's so far behind now so there's no points, good luck to all!"

[dews]

I'm grateful every day that Adobe are committed to releasing regular updates that allow us to continue doing what we do, with a technology that is quite literally amazing.

I'm also committed to creating successful applications and hiring people - as others in this thread are too.

You Sir, @ASWC need to be quiet and allow the rest of us to do our part in not only keeping this technology alive but bringing others to the fold.

[Frédéric C.]

@ASWC, with all due respect, I think there is one point you seem to forget: the community itself. For every tech, its community is very important and plays a big role in attracting new developers (or discouraging them). Yes, we can always expect Adobe to do all the work, but let's take our responsibility too, and let's admit that we are also the ones who can make this technology successful or not.

Do you really think that repeating ad nauseam that Adobe will pull the plug sooner or later helps promoting Adobe AIR in any way? If a developer considering AIR reads your message, he will probably choose to pick another option, because AIR's death appears like a fact in your comments (while, let's be honest, it's just a wild guess based on your personal opinion only). For me, it's a form of sabotage, plain and simple. Why blame Adobe if you are the first to contribute to its demise?

There are other techs less used than AIR, but which have a great, enthusiastic community, and it makes all the difference in the world. But here, we were already plagued by the "Flash is dead" mentality, and now we have to endure the "AIR is dead" mentality too. This place would be much different if people focused more on creativity, and all the great things AIR allows to do NOW.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Adobe and the AIR team, for all the wonderful work they do. They must also be pretty depressed to read all those comments, where people keep complaining about what is lacking (or may happen in the future), instead of what has been already achieved. Guys, you really created a wonderful tool! I'm having a blast working with it every day, and you have all my gratitude! ❤️

[ASWC]

I faced the same insults, the same call to ban from forums when I started to announce the end of Flash right after Adobe dropped ASNext, nothing new here. But you are right, I'm just a mean hater that has never done anything for the community, that is if we don't count the 10 years as super moderator in actionscript.org (RIP), the half million readers of my AS3 tutorials, the thousands of people that used my free AS3/AIR frameworks .... Yeah if we ignore that then I'm just a hater who doesn't know anything.

I don't just have an opinion as so many like yourself put it, I based my opinion on what Adobe is doing and maybe you should start too.

Enjoying your dedicated AIR IDE? Oh that's right, no longer developed cos Adobe pulled the plug on it.

Enjoying Scout? Oh that's right no longer developed cos Adobe pulled the plug on it.

Enjoying ASNext? Oh that's right Adobe pulled the plug on it.

Enjoying the community? You get 5 AIR related questions on stackoverflow on a good day, wanna know how many you get in ANY other technology? I assure you you don't wanna know.

Some here make the effort to actually respond to my arguments and understand them, others just want to insult, shut me off, or cry, is there such a thing as a AIR cult?

[davidrenelt]

It's perfectly understandable that people who love working with Adobe AIR will not like the tech to be discussed negatively. It's a painful thing moving to a new tech when you have 10+ years of tooling. I'm in the same boat. But, what's the ethical thing to do when a new developer comes here to figure out if AIR is an option. You can assure them that everything is fine with the platform in the hopes that this makes it so. But who can honestly claim that. For me the platform died when Jackson Dunstan moved on. For years one after another evangelist for the platform disappeared. Remember "ByteArray.org" or "GotoAndLearn" ?

When Jackson, one of the last serious bloggers around AS3 development, called it quits on the platform, I lost confidence remaining. I Still have to support a couple of apps i did in Adobe AIR, but i think the ethical thing to say to a new developer is that it is very unlikely this tech is going to survive just on the fact alone that it is a really good one. So it's very nice an noble for Adobe to keep supporting the tech, but they decided a long time ago to not promote it in any way.

When i started doing web sites, i used Perl (that was around 1996, yes... i'm old). This is no longer a thing. The tech still exists, but who would tell anyone to learn/invest in Perl at this point when you could learn/invest in PHP instead.

Regardless of your position in the matter, go and diversify your skills and tooling.

[crawley27]

Sure, freedom of expression etc. All for it. Perl and the Good Old Days. So sad. And so on.

The title of this thread is AIR Roadmap.

A lot of posts here belong in a different thread called "Disgruntled Users And Their Prosaic Kvetching". The "ethical" thing to do is take those posts elsewhere so those of us who need info on the actual topic as reflected in the title can get at it without reading nine pages of tl; dr.

[ASWC]

This entire thread, the entire 9 pages of it, has been about arguments about the future of AIR.

On one side you had: "That's it? That's the roadmap? You must be joking."

On the other side you had: "There's a roadmap? Oh goody! Now I can sleep fine knowing AIR will last forever!"

So you pretending only my posts are off subject is simply a lie, the entire thread has been about what I'm talking about.

Now somehow you single me out and want me banned and my posts deleted just cos you don't like what I say? Get a grip dude.

[Devarai]

Hej man,

this thread is one of a very depressed person bashing the technology we

create altogether an income with in the dumbest manner. Nothing

constructive at all. No ideas or proposals how the Adobe Air team should

improve the runtime and the SDK. Could someone please close this disturbing

flow of negativity?

Henning

[ASWC]

As everyone knows, insulting someone always make the best arguments so congrats on that ... Your insults are clearly a better contribution to this thread than my "depressing" posts. As someone said earlier in a prior post, all Flash/AIR evangelists have left the platform long ago, do you find that depressing too? or do you think that means the platform has never been better? lol

[Devarai]

My dear!

You should go to your favorite Irish pub and paint the darkest picture of

the Adobe Corporation there (and than you can get even wasted at the same

time). For me Adobe Air works still very well and in any case the platform

should be moved to open source one day like they did it with Flex....than

we will have all the time in the world to move our apps over to Unity or

whatever. The developer has to be the evangelist himself.... who needs

these marketing guys around? I think it is a US thing to have

"evangelists". There are many ways to promote a good technology

platform.... and taking now the argument that the bad Adobe "pulls some

plugs" is just bashing negativity instead of proposing something we can do

and asking Adobe in a concrete manner where to plug the plugs in the

future. You have to be positive! You have to make proposals for improving!

You have to be constructive. Otherwise, back to the beginning....alcohol is

maybe not the solution for you!

[ZachBJ]

At this point , ASWC​ doesn't need AIR..
for now he needs doctor . period.

[ASWC]

Your resume the situation very well, anyone who DARES say something YOU qualify as bad about Adobe or AIR needs a doctor and is just a hater, period and nothing will change your mind, DONE.

Other Haters:

- anyone here agreeing with me (quite a few)

- Open source AS3 library/framework teams > most gone long ago

- AS3/Flash/AIR evangelists > most/all moved on long ago

- Anyone starting cross platform development and NOT picking up AIR > 99.99% of people

So yeah keep living in your fantasy world where AIR attracts new developers, its community is not shrinking, and it lives forever ....

[ZachBJ]

I was saying you need to go to doctor not because of everything you've DARED to say.

you need go to doctor because you DARE to say bad to Adobe to AIR.. you feel freakin disappointed ..

...BUT you DON'T DARE  enough to entirely LEAVE everything-AIR, everything-Flash or if necessary everything-Adobe.

You totally waste your time.

If you knew Adobe might be not responsible..

If you totally disappointed ,...

then LEAVE, once, now and forever like those who no longer have interest in AIR/Flash or even Adobe

You dare enough to speak about AIR/Adobe , but you don't dare enough to leave and take bold action.

I'm sooooo sorry for you..

Adobe is NOT YOUR SAVIOR

your savior now? => D.O.C.T.O.R
(and may be a psychologist)

[chaky]

I am working for the last 3 years in Adobe AIR and honestly it was awesome for the most part of it.

And since than they have improved it a lot. For me almost all the features are there.

There are only TWO THINGS that I want from AIR at this point and that is:

1) Increase memory limit for GPU textures both on mobile and desktop.

2) Improve performance as much as possible. I feel Adobe did not invest anything in improving performance in AIR.

If Adobe manages to improve on those 2 things mentioned above and continue bug fixing AIR will be Rock Solid. I don't know what more could you ask. I love AS3 syntax very much and I will stick with AIR as long as possible.

Currently, I do not have any issues that blocks me from using AIR.

I only desire a little more performance improvement if possible and that's it.

[rewb0rn]

pshtif​ Then I think I know that you are working for a certain Berlin based studio...? I think developing your own engine with Haxe without using any 3rd party libs is technically challenging and interesting, but as you say then you waste a lot of resources on that. We chose to go the 3rd party library route and we are very happy to work with OpenFL (together with Air) that solves most of the problems you mentioned for us, and if we feel the need we can go and fix it, since it is open source.

[ASWC]

I'm very suspicious now of your ability to comprehend what anyone says here. From what I can make up of your post you do not understand my points, none of them, and you do not understand the type of work I'm doing with AIR and especially the reasons why I'm leaving the platform. other than that you seem to imply that anyone having anything bad to say about AIR should stop using it or see a doctor ... Let me break it down for you, the ONLY reason people like me are still around on these forums is because we still CARE.

[Devarai]

Hey dude,

as you said, you guys are nothing but haters! Only haters like haters.

Better leave this forum and let the serious people get their stuff done and

discussed here. Some psychologists would surely really agree on that

"haters" need treatment. Got it? And of course, all the "others are always

the bad haters".... better look into the mirror then you see the hater!

[ASWC]

It amuses me that you think you belong to the "serious people" group while at the same time claiming that people who don't agree with you need treatment .... You really think being on the side that can't stop insulting is a sign that you belong to the "serious people" group? Would I be more "serious" to you if I start insulting you too? Is this your criteria for seriousness?

[Devarai]

I feel deeply sorry, if I ever insulted you "personally." That was not my

intention, but to make clear that this discussion is nonesense. What do I

know at all about you personally "ASWC"? Basically nothing, you are an

anonymous poster. Do you really consider this thread as a good thread which

is helpful to people/developers? Do you consider bashing Air and readers of

this forum good? I likely only wasted my time catching up to your insults,

responding with further insults. I am out of this thread now. I have better

things to do than discussing with someone like you who insists telling

people to hate Adobe and Adobe Air.

[ASWC]

All lies. I know we live in the "fake news" era but this is just a forum.

So let me correct your blatant lies:

- I never insulted anyone here, EVER.

- I do not bash Adobe, I only talk about their lack of commitment.

- I don't bash reader of these forums.

- I never told anyone anywhere to hate Adobe or AIR.

- You never had to catch up to my insults since I never posted any on these forums.

The real question here, why do you insult me? why do you lie about what I say? Why do you misrepresent me?

Those are the real question cos NONE of what you said can be found in any of my posts, NONE.