Adobe AIR 3 Adds Hardware-Accelerated 3D Graphics and Video

Along with Flash Player 11, Adobe has also released AIR 3, the latest incarnation of the cross-platform technology. Since it's based on Flash 11, it shares many of the new features, but app developers will enjoy some of the new capabilities built into AIR 3.

One interesting new feature is the ability to bundle apps with the runtime itself, making it easier for users to install an app if they don't already have AIR.

This eliminates a step in the install process and should lead to higher user conversion figures.

Dubbed Captive Runtime Support, the technology is now available on Android and the AIR desktop clients, for Windows and Mac OS X, since, as of AIR 3, Linux is no longer supported.

The feature was already available on iOS, since developers couldn't have released their apps in the iTunes App Store otherwise.

But that's not all, with Native Extensions for AIR, developers will be able to leverage platform-specific features to ensure that their apps are just as capable as native apps.

This somewhat beats the purpose of using AIR in the first place, being able to write code once for many platforms, but it's still preferable to not having access to some native capabilities at all.

Adobe is focusing on the mobile front quite a lot with AIR 3 with such features as support for iOS background audio playback, Android licensing service, Android front-facing cameras and encrypted local storage.

Of course, AIR also boasts support for the biggest new feature in Flash 11, Stage 3D, the hardware accelerated graphics API which promises full-blown games built on Flash. Stage 3D is available for the desktop versions of AIR 3 as well as the TV platform.

AIR 3 also brings support for Stage Video hardware acceleration on the mobile front. The feature, introduced with Flash 11, leverages dedicated hardware, usually the GPU, in devices to decode video content, leaving the CPU free to do other tasks.

Adobe AIR for Windows is available for download here.
Adobe AIR for Mac OS X is available for download here.

Adobe AIR SDK for Windows is available for download here.