Creating your first Away3D application can be a daunting task due to the number of steps that have to be completed before even a single line of code is written. This chapter will walk you through the steps required to get your first Away3D application up and running.
This chapter covers the following topics:
- The different Away3D versions
- Downloading Away3D
- Configuring your development environment
- An overview of the concepts used by Away3D
- Creating a simple application
- Compiling the application with your chosen authoring tool
Flash Player 10 was released by Adobe in 2008, and it brought with it a number of performance improvements and additional features that greatly benefit 3D engines like Away3D. However, these features are not backwards compatible, which means that a Flash application that targets Flash Player 10 will not run on Flash Player 9. To accommodate both Flash Player 9 and 10, Away3D maintains two versions of the engine: Away3D version 2.x, which targets Flash Player 9, and Away3D version 3.x, which targets Flash Player 10.
When Flash Player 10 was initially released, developers had good reason to support the older version Flash Player 9, because the percentage of devices with Flash Player 10 installed was relatively small. At the time of writing though Flash Player 10 is installed on over 90% of internet-enabled devices. You can view the current statistics on the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html.
Given the significant market penetration of Flash Player 10, and the additional performance and features provided by the Flash Player 10 version of Away3D, this book will focus on Away3D version 3.x.