If someone 3 months ago would have said to me, do you see any reason why you would stop devoting so much time to Flash/Flex in the next year. I would have said not a chance. I love interactive content on the web and more specifically interactive 3D within a browser. I have long history with AS3 and the only other “competitors” (Silverlight and HTML5)  aren’t capable of what I would need them to do.

My world got turned upside down the day I was shown the Unity Web Player. I froze, my jaw dropped, this was amazing. I had seen demos of Unity before in presentations about iPhone development, but this was different, this was in a browser. Most importantly it meant I could program full 3D in C# for the web.  So I went back to my original list of reasons why I was not interested in Unity the first time I saw it. Firstly it was really for iPhone and Wii development at the time, but now it’s also for the web.  The next reason being, I didn’t own a Mac. After doing some reading I realized that sure enough the Unity guys have dealt with that, the editor was now available for Windows. My last reason was price, but since this tool is so great I could deal with the price. In theory I would be in, but there was one other reason that hadn’t occurred to me. What about the thousands of hours I’ve put into AS3 development. Separation anxiety, going from a place where I know so much, to a place where I know nothing.

After a week of thought on the topic, I decided that Unity3D development was what I had to do. This was what I was waiting for, it just didn’t come in the form of a new Flash Player release. It has been roughly a month since the shift in my spare time over to Unity3D and I couldn’t be happier, the power and the opportunities are incredible.

So this is why there has been a little drought in examples on this blog, Unity3D has stolen my free time. This does not mean nothing new is coming, I’m actually finishing up some JigLibFlash stuff as I write this (so clearly Unity3D hasn’t stole all my free time). I am also hoping in the coming months that I will have some Unity3D examples to put up on this blog.

If you haven’t already done so please go check out Unity3D now.

I have one final comment and it is for Adobe: I know your plan is to unify the mobile player with the web player. In doing this you are slowing down the advancement of the web player to a point that by the time you have them ready to unify, there might not be anything left to unify.

On March 14th I will be speaking at this year’s Winnipeg Code Camp. My lecture is titled ’3D Web Development – Papervision3D and Beyond’. This lecture will include a brief history of 3D content on the web, how to get started in Papervision3D including functional examples and an overview of where this technology is headed. Knowledge of ActionScript is not required to get a lot out of this session. Event registration begins at 8:00 am and did I mention this is a free event. Head on over to their official site for more information (http://www.winnipegcodecamp.com).