Flash demos
Watching the demoscene grow over the years it is nice to see that everything is moving in circles and goo things come back from time to time. It’s pretty much like the waves of old coture appear every now and than, get mixed up with new influences and end like something new. At first it looks ridiculous, than it feels like coming home and suddenly it is gone again. Guess it is called fashion.
Being a big Flash fan, I was always wondering, when Flash demos will look like real scene demos. The first Flash intros I saw where more like old, simple stuff, than real coded effects. Egomedias little scripted intro and yugops unforgetable scrollermenu showed a glimpse of things to come.
A couple of years ago I talked to coders and organizers at BreakPoint, in order to get a Flash compo underway. I knew if those scene coders would get interested in Flash, the sky would be the limit. The general believe, at that time, was that Flash is a niche product, too slow and smells like a demomaker. Stunned about scene people not willing to surpass these limits and go for terra incognita I stuck my head into the ground and didn’t care much about it anymore.
Today, I stumbled across Henri Sarasvirtas flashscene.org and was more than pleased to see what the flash demo scene has archived so far. The latest productions written in AS 3.0 look and feel like real PC-demos. Major Progress here! Most of the latter productions where released at this years Assembly in the browser-demo category. At least Assembly orgas seem to know what potential flash has. I wonder if Adobe knows….
So take a look at those fine demos: