Unity3D is awesome!
How I learned to stop worrying about plugin penetration and love Unity3D
I started this blog almost 2 years ago with an idea to explore the world of 3D in Flash and learn new stuff on the way. I quickly fell in love with Papervision3D. It offered a whole new world of possibilities for someone like me – bored with buttons & dropdowns and not particularly interested in building Flex-type applications.
Unfortunately the performance limitations of Flash Player prevented me from going far beyond the demos I posted on this blog. Creating a solid piece of 3D in Flash, with a decent frame rate is either impossible or requires an insane amount of code optimization. It often means resorting to low level programming. I think it is dangerous, because it’s easy to loose track of the overall picture then. I feel that this is what happened to me the last few months.
I sure heard about Unity3D before, but, as it often happens, I did not have time to take a closer look. I applied for the Unity 2.5 beta test program back in February. I was accepted and got a 30-day copy of the software. What happened next? I opened it only once before the trial expired.
It’s just hard to move to another software/platform when you are so completely immersed in Flash. Unity3D ended on my perpetual to-do list alongside with so many other things. I am sure many of you feel the same way.
A new toy
Recently I bought a Macbook Pro. My first Mac ever! A friend suggested that I move all my projects and workspace to the Mac immediately to make the transition fast. Unfortunately I had some difficult and urgent projects to finish, and ultimately I decided to stick with Flash on the PC for a while.
I had to do something with the Mac then… and that’s where Unity3D comes in. Additionally, this time I decided to buy a license, thinking that spending those 150 EUR extra will make me even more motivated.
After just a few hours I was amazed. And I mean AMAZED! You can check the Tropical Paradise demo if you haven’t seen it yet, download the trial copy and start exploring the 3D Game Tutorial to see what I mean.
It’s not only how fast the 3D rendering is. Unity3D has a very intuitive interface organized around a simple and clear concept. I can literally see myself doing 3D games in a matter of weeks from now. Doesn’t take long to realize the sad truth that Flash is far behind in almost every aspect.
The myth of high penetration
I do not want to do a list of pros and cons or some Flash vs. Unity3D comparison here. For a person who wants to do 3D for the web Unity3D is the winner by knockout and it makes no sense to elaborate on the subject.
However, there is one common argument against Unity3D. It’s the low penetration rate of the web plugin. While Flash Player is at 98%, Unity3D is probably at < 1%. Aye! That sounds bad, doesn’t it? I thought so too, but I made some thinking and researched a bit. Now please consider these points:
- Unity3D plugin is only ~4MB and it’s installation is seamless. In most cases, it doesn’t even require browser restart. Thanks to this it has a high successful-install rate, which means it’s share of the market will be quickly growing. You can read a whole article on this topic here.
- Content created with Unity3D can be visually and interactively much superior to anything you can do with Flash. This will convince people that the little extra effort required to install the plugin is worth it.
- Most important argument: people access content from different devices. There are mobile phones, consoles, multi-touch interfaces etc. PC is no longer the king. Unity3D can be published for two of the most successful platforms out there: iPhone and Wii. “Web penetration” has no practical meaning in this case.
So, if you think Unity3D is not worth looking at because of the low penetration of the web plugin, think again!
This blog note may seem emotional. It is! I feel I have discovered the perfect technology, that I have been looking for and I just wanted to share. Now I need to master Unity3D as quickly as possible. On my way I will certainly discover it’s flaws… it must have some. Maybe later I will find a more objective way to compare Flash and Unity.
Flash is much more than 3D and there are multiple directions it is evolving in. I am not predicting “the end of Flash” or anything like that – it would be ridiculous. Unity3D on the other hand, with all it’s coolness is still the new kid on the block. It might be a huge success but it might as well share the fate of Wild Tangent and Shockwave players (I hope not!).
One thing is sure: if you are into 3D, you can’t miss it!
where is *your* demo?
It’s coming :) …not too soon though
It’s on like Donkey Kong!! I love fresh Unity romances! You’ve been added to the lovers list!
awesome! looking forward to what you come up with using Unity!
The Unity Web Player’s penetration is at or about 1% so you have that right, but the install numbers are crazy high and so I imagine that figure will begin to change rapidly. Thanks for the positive thoughts, we’ll keep working on the tech, you keep working on the content and together we’ll get that penetration number up so it’s (hopefully) just not something folks worry about! :)
Indeed Unity is pretty neat, and when it comes to making 3D games and well, even 2D games it does blow Flash out of the water, but id say just for games. Being a Flex dev guy even though id like to see Flash do well as a gaming platform it seems it just will continue to fall behind unless adobe starts opening it up more so it can handle graphics adn stuff better. But as an RIA dev tool it is truly ahead of the game and is an amazing platform for developing rich internet applications.
Hopefully you will make a blog post sharing your thoughts on Untiy 3D after you have tinkered with it a bit more :-)
It looks like the O3D API from google.
I’m going to give this a try when I get some time over :)
Unity is fantastic. The way it interacts with 3D software, greatly supports light mapping. It’s a dream.
[...] Unity3D is Awesome- Flash vs Unity3D- In case you missed it the discussion is not over- Flash vs Unity3D roundup. I promptly added him to Flash Infidelity all over the place-Unity3D is taking up all of your time when he used the word “emotional”. [...]
There are many competitors for that 1%: Quest3D, O3D, Virtools etc. But Shockwave has 50% penetration and big community. Yet another fight of standards?
If you want to make a really mass browser game, you need to use a standard with 99% coverage (you know, what’s it).
What’s the point doing the best 3D app ever if less than 1% of the people will use it ?
Do not underestimate the importance of being able to publish to the iPhone.. which saves you from the hell of its Mac-only devkit and the horror of Objective-C. Unity IDE(!) runs/will run on PC too, and has proper language support and lots of good api’s (sound, input and no OpenGL hassle).
I tried installing and got a no go message saying my VGA card is a pussy and can’t handle the demands of the beast…
Well it’s either time to update my hardware (which runs flash CS4 perfectly) or it’s time for unity3D guys to have some modesty!
one thing for is for sure in a standards battle – end users win. Nice post, keep us posted as you wade further into U3D
After Bartek’s Twit i’ve also tried to launch Unity. My god.. Awesome stuff. With a little help of anybody who is able to properly prepare models&txts you can easily make “revelations of world”. With only 30 minutes i’ve made terrain, collide fields, light map, skyboxes, materials, textures are in app when you just add them to directory using Finder… and so on.. Without serious scripting infact. Good choice Bartosz! (www.kamilmajewski.com/projects/3d_teren)
[...] http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/27/flash-vs-unity3d/ [...]
I am predicting “The end of everydayflash.com and the opening of everydayunit3d.com… of course i will follow you!!
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge Unity3D fan. We use both here at Pixelthis. However, just a note on your conclusions above: Flash content can be ported to many devices, including Online, Wii, Mobile phone, PC/Mac, PSP, and many more. Although perhaps not as easy as unity, it is possible :)
What programming language do you use with Unity3D?
@Carlos Vega Don’t worry, changes won’t be that dramatic :) While I intend to write more about Unity3D, Flash stuff is still going to be present here.
@PixelThis Thanks for this note. I was referring to what the software offers out-of-the-box, but you are right on that one. There are also some highly interesting initiatives with HaXe and iPhone so things are getting interesting on the Flash side too.
@Og2t I opted for C# as I think it is closest to AS3 (it has some cool features, that I would love to see in future versions of AS, maybe I’ll blog about that). Unity3d offers a choice when it comes to scripting though: you can use Javascript, C# or Boo, which is a dialect of Python.
We did a Unity project a couple years ago; it really is amazing what they can accomplish in the browser, isn’t it? We’ve been looking at it again because of all the publishing options that are now available. I think that more than makes up for the browser plugin penetration.
I’d love to see adobe buying unity3d and in some way incorporating the technologies into the Flash Platform.
What’s cool about Flash and standard internet is that you can show off your work to everyone. Pass a link to a non-technical friend, make something viral that reach very many. Quite new plugins feel limited reach and unsure for future. Flash limitations can make you creative and you don’t need to be a hardcore 3d/lowlevel/etc programmer.
Yes, you remotivate me! Thanks, I’m going to try Unit3D rigth now!!
[...] Drozdz of Everydayflash.com wrote a great post about Unity3D. He also talks about Unity vs [...]
[...] amazing stuff, just as the Muse platform is rounding out its feature set. Anyways, thought I’d share an example of this praise from the blog of a prolific Flash (!) developer, Bartek Drozdz, after discovering Unity: After [...]
Ok, now here’s my story, I’ve seen it all and done it all… Flash, DX Studio, Shiva, (not torque) and of course Unity 3d. But this ain’t no stiff competition, Unity offers the best platform for rapid 3d game development because
1.) Intuitive GUI that a newbie can get used to in 5 mins (No kidding)
2.) A web plugin that’s very portable and actually works!
3.) amazing cross platform development options with 1 click deployment
4.) Supporting the Dotnet FX (through mono) was the best move they could make, I mean, what other platform gives you the option to code in 3 different languages with a good level of interoperability? It even allows u to use an external editor such as visual studio (which is what i use).
The line has been drawn… unity is Lord of the rest
[...] 05/27/2009 Unity is Awesome- Unity vs Flash [...]
[...] 05/27/2009 Unity is Awesome- Unity vs Flash [...]
Another flash and unity fan here!
I do quite a bit of 3d in flash using Papervision3d as well and have started using web publishing in 3d game engines now too.
I’m really excited where all this seems to be going!
Very informative.. Thanks for this post.
A guy I work with told me about your site and how you’ve recently switched to way more Unity content then Fash. I’m a flash developer and I’ve been working through my first Unity book and I too can’t believe what is playing in my web browser! In a day, I have a 3D island with physics, textures, etc. that i can walk around, it’s really amazing. I’ll have to check out more of your post but I totally agree with this one.
Not sure if you’re aware, but real-time 3D is coming soon to Flash: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/08/tech.preview.scheduled.for.fall
@foo yes it is! :)
Unity3d sucks. I don’t know if you have tried developing with it, but it blows. There are so many issues with the editor, and also with the runtimes. Unity fails on almost every feature a developer cares about…such as source control, facebook integration (z-index) on web-pages (which blocks social feature integration), and a decent debugging experience.
I believe that after flash’s 3D plugin and Unreal’s ActiveX controls are released, you will see Unity 3D Web market die out. The ONLY things unity has is 3D on iPhone…but if they don’t solve their developer issues, such as source control, you will not see anything but sub-par iPhone games.
It is not realistic to have a team work on a Unity Project…which leaves only indie developers willing to work with this POS.