agraddy

I view Unity3D with it's web viewer as more of a platform than a 3D engine.

Here's a link to an art project built with Unity3D (it may take a while to load - I used Firebug's Net tab to make sure elements were still loading) which I think shows Unity3D is much more than just a 3D game engine and definitely a challenge to flash: http://www.everyday3d.com/works/installation/colors/

I have one client for which I built an interactive 3D visualization system. The project used Papervision and after trying numerous techniques to minimize the load it took on slower computers we ended up having to make it a 2D system because flash couldn't display everything we wanted to show effectively (it's also possible my Papervision skills aren't up to par and a Papervision expert could make the project work, I still have a feeling the visualization would still need to be limited). Molehill would probably really help this project out.

After building the above system, I started seeing more and more information about Unity3D. If I was to start the project again today, I'm pretty sure I would look heavily into using Unity3D over Flash for the visualization system.

The blog I mentioned in my first post has an excellent post about Unity3D's potential future: http://www.everyday3d.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/08/unity3d-...

It seems to me that this is a response to Unity 3D - http://unity3d.com/

I've been doing flash development since 2001 but if I had to build a 3D game today, I would definitely be taking a close look at building it using Unity.

Flash developers used to get a lot of flack for not being "real" developers but one thing I've always enjoyed about the community is that they tend to stay on the cutting edge of multimedia technologies. A great blog about Unity3D comes from a developer who used to be heavily involved in Flash 3d work: http://everydayflash.com/

What a great site! Thanks a lot.

Ahh...thanks, that would explain it. I didn't make it on Hacker News yesterday. This was the first time I was hearing about it.

I realize that a lot of people have issues with FoxNews but it was the best article I came across that fully explained the issues and potential ramifications of the COICA bill. The full text of the bill can be found here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804

This bill has the potential to greatly affect both US and non-US startups. From what I can tell, if a judge rules that a non-US site's purpose is to violate copyright then the judge's ruling would require US businesses to stop working with the site - ISPs block, financial and ad companies break business ties. A non-US site could see all US traffic blocked and it's PayPal and Adsense accounts revoked.

As I mentioned in another thread, this bill would set a dangerous precedent for the US government to be able to block a website with a simple ruling by a judge. I could see cases where large entertainment companies would bring lawsuits against small web startups in places where the courts would favorably lean in their direction (think patent cases in East Texas).

Here's a link to the full text of the bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804

I'm surprised this submission doesn't have more upvotes. It seems like I constantly see Net Neutrality being debated all over the tech community but this bill seems much more insidious than any of the possible evils that Net Neutrality supporters suggest.

From my understanding, a simple decision by a judge can knock an entire website offline. The criteria to be blocked is that the sole purpose of the website is to infringe on copyright. If the domain is registered in the US, then the domain registrar is required to remove access to the domain. If the domain is registered outside of the US, then ISPs and other businesses, including financial services and ad services are required to block/prevent the website from operating (I'm thinking this will greatly affect PayPal and Google Adsense).

In my opinion, this bill would set a dangerous precedent for the US government to be able to block any website. I could see cases where large entertainment companies would bring lawsuits against small web startups in places where the courts would favorably lean in their direction (think patent cases in East Texas).

This hits personally because I run a website that helps independent artists sell their music online. I can't really see any possibility of us being dragged into court on copyright infringement claims, but I do know we have to deal with scammers on the site frequently. It's disturbing that if this bill is passed a dispute over copyright infringement has the possibility of shutting down the entire site (which would have the ironic side effect of harming a lot of independent artists who then would have no way of contacting us online to figure out how to get paid).

It would be great if it was updated so that the links could be opened in background tabs with a mousewheel click like normal links (as of this writing mousewheel doesn't work for me to open new links - FF 3.6.3). I'm a flash developer but one thing I can't stand about flash is the inability to open links in other tabs.