·:[ flash blog of betaruce ]:·
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Just in case you could not view it last time. Move your hands around instead of just up and down. Works much better with a stationary bg.

Here’s the demo video
~betaruce/flash8/webcam_handControl_2_demo.swf

and here’s the real thing. have your webcam ready~

Go to my Flash 8 page for fla and other experiments.

I actually do not like the previous layout so much, and so I decided to change it today I like this new layout. Simple, neat and tidy

Besides I also add a code-highlighting plugin from http://blog.enargi.com/codesnippet/~ I hope my AS codes (and other codes as well) will look better in my blog under the highlighting

Went to MMUG (HK) gathering last Friday. First Luar talked about the new features of Flash8, followed by Colin who made a convenient easing panel with JS API. Then it was my turn to present some of my experiments like filters, BitmapData, and the most important of all - Webcam motion detection.

I’m happy that my simple example of waving hands in front of webcam to control stuff in computer did arouse the interest of the audience, and more important is that it can inspire them to create more funny stuff later

here’s a re-post of my example (in case you can’t see b4 due to my slow server….) have your webcam and hands ready

Here’s the source: ~betaruce/flash8/webcam_handControl.fla
if you create any funny stuff, pls let me know

My 1st Flash book, which is in Chinese, will be published this month~ Thanks to Grandtech the publisher~
I’m writing this time with Lis and Maso, both are from Taiwan (I myself is from HK, by the way ).

I’ve contributed 2 chapters on the new features and AS of Flash 8, plus several chapters talking about some Flash AS examples. I hope my book can give some insights for Asian Flasher on integrating Math and Physics with Actionscripting to create special effects, stimulations and 3D.

The following is the Chinese description of the book on Grandtech’s website~

book/books_det.asp?otherid=440

Flash8達人秀－ActionScript創作大集合

當您看到網路上流傳的各種精采酷炫的Flash動畫時，在讚嘆之餘，是否曾經想要一探究竟卻又求教無門呢？上奇科技聽到您的心聲了！
本書邀集了三位頂尖的Flash達人現身說法，傾囊相授，告訴您各種讓人膛目結舌，意想不到的Flash動畫製作技巧，書附光碟附有所有Flash原始檔案，只要依照本書的步驟進行演練，保證讓您茅塞頓開，迅速增加一甲子功力！

本書精彩內容包括：

-Flash 8與ActionScript全新功能蒐錄
-利用數學函數創造眩麗迷人的電腦藝術
-運用ActionSript創作生動自然的煙霧與火焰效果
-全景導覽效果
-3D網頁導覽
-Flash Lite手機遊戲製作範例－危機一發

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex2_intro.html

MM will be announcing Flash Player 8.5 and AS 3 soon (yes shortly after the official release of Flash 8 ) !!
Read the following passage which is a quote from the above MM site. We can have a look at the new Flash Player 8.5 which includes AS 3 on 17 Oct (coincide with the Macromedia MAX Developers Conference). Flash Player 8.5 will be scheduled to ship with the Flex 2 product line.

A New Foundation for Rich Internet Applications: Flash Player 8.5

Flash Player, the backbone of the Flash Platform, will also be evolving to provide the foundation for the Flex 2 product line and next-generation RIAs. Over the years the player, which began primarily as a client for playing animation, incrementally extended its scripting language (ActionScript) by adding support for portions of the ECMAScript standard (the same standard that drives the development of JavaScript). By the release of Flash Player 7, ActionScript implemented the vast majority of the ECMA standard. With Flash Player 8.5 (scheduled to ship with the Flex 2 product line), we will be introducing ActionScript 3.0, a powerful object-oriented programming language designed for productivity and performance and based on the next generation of the ECMAScript standard.

Flash Player 8 (released in September of 2005) makes great advances in the rendering engine, introducing a set of extended expressiveness capabilities (filters, advanced gradient controls, rendering performance, and so forth), and video support enhancements (higher quality codec, alpha channel support, and so forth) that are unparalleled on the web today. Flash Player 8 also greatly improves the APIs that allow a developer to communicate between applications running in the player, the browser’s HTML document object model, and associated JavaScript functions, making it easier for developers to add Flash components to their existing web applications.

Flash Player 8.5 builds on the advances in Flash Player 8 by focusing on improving script execution on the virtual machine. In fact, it includes a brand new, highly-optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) known as AVM2. AVM2 is built from the ground up to work with the next generation of ActionScript 3.0 to support the needs of RIA developers. The new virtual machine is significantly faster, supports full runtime error reporting and industry-standard debugging. It includes binary socket support, allowing developers to extend the player to work with any binary protocol. Flash player 8.5 will also contain AVM1, which executes ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 code, for backward-compatibility with existing and legacy content.

With ActionScript 3.0, we have achieved more than simple compliance with the ECMAScript standard; Macromedia now chairs the ECMAScript committee and helps drive its evolution. ActionScript 3.0 features a compilation mode for stronger compile-time type checking that provides the benefits of languages such as Java or C#. It supports new features to streamline data manipulation, including the E4X (ECMAScript for XML) standard, which extends the language and adds XML as a native data type allowing developers to more naturally interact with and manipulate XML. It adds regular expressions support for better text parsing and processing. It sheds some of the ad hoc event handling schemes in the old virtual machine in favor of a unified model based on the W3C DOM Events standard. And it has significantly updated APIs aimed at the application developer audience.

For a complete overview of the new capabilities, stay tuned as we release an overview of ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash Player 8.5 alpha.

As mentioned previously, I’ve uploaded my Flash stuff to another server for better download and loading speed. The links are as follows. Can you leave a comment to tell me if things are better now? Or you still experience some slow loading of files?

Sources: ~betaruce/flash8.zip
Flash 8 Exp: ~betaruce/flash8

I would also like to know if the speed of text loading in the blog is ok or not~

Thanks for your comments Your response is important for the future maintainence of this site~

I’m also very frustrated with my webhosting company. Anyway I’ve moved all my Flash 8 stuff to another server so that you guys can download files easily.

Here you are: ~betaruce/flash8/

You can use the old link anyway as I will redirect it to the above site.

I think the speed will be ok. Pls tell me if there’s still problem with this link
and I’ll be happy if you can tell me that it is ok for you now

I’ve also edited the previous post so that you can see the photoshop effect now hope you will find the effect cool~

I follow in Flash 8 exactly what this Photoshop tutorial talks about. The result is great:

This make use of the DisplacementMap filter and Overlay blendmode. The text will displace according to the background texture.
The effect is as good as that produced in Photoshop. In Flash we can even have more dynamic control. In the above example, you can turn on or off the effects by arrow keys:

Right: turn off filter
Left: turn on filter
Up: turn off blendmode
Down: turn on blendmode

If you want the fla, please visit my Flash 8 page. Enjoy the new features of AS

some ppl may not be able to download from the previous link due to limited bandwidth of geocities. Therefore I put the zip into another server. If you still cannot download or the speed is slow, pls let me know

Link 1) ~betaruce/flash8.zip

Link 2) http://www.geocities.com/betaruce/flash8.zip

If you are in HK, why not come and join us this Friday Let’s share our Flash 8 experiments~

Click here for details.