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Flash 11 and AIR 3 coming with hardware-accelerated 3D in October, to come on mobile platforms too

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Adobe announced that the upcoming versions of their Flash and AIR platforms will be out in October and published a laundry list of improvements. One of the biggest changes is the hardware acceleration of both 2D and 3D graphics. Adobe claims gives 1000x performance increase compared the old versions, which will allow devs to create “console-quality games”.

Flash 11 and AIR 3 will run on every platform you can imagine – Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, including 64-bit support for these OSes, but also Android, iOS, BlackBerry’s tablet OS and connected TVs.

AIR (which compiles Flash into stand-alone apps, plus extra functionality) gets Native Extensions, which will enable full access to the hardware – including NFC, magnetometers, dual screens and so on.

Then there’s support for HD videos on iOS, 7.1 channel audio and a DRM system to allow video rentals for example. The so-called Captive Runtime will package AIR along with the app, so that users no longer have to manually update the AIR runtime on their phones/computers.

Check out what’s possible with Adobe Flash 11 and AIR 3:

Both Flash 11 and AIR 3 for desktops will be coming out in early October (you can grab a release candidate now), while the mobile version is available in pre-release form with the production release coming in “the near future”.

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