Flash Player 11.2/AIR 3.2 beta 5 available

January 31, 2012 — Adobe Flash Player 11.2 beta 5 is now available for download. Note that this is the last beta before final release.

This beta release provides access to the Flash Player 11.2 runtime for Windows, Mac OS and Linux desktop environments. The key features and benefits of Flash Player 11.2 beta are:

Drivers gating for hardware acceleration relaxed — Previously, the hardware accelerated content was gated to 1/1/2009, however, we have relaxed the driver gating to 1/1/2008.

点评：之前的Flash Player 11版本限制了显卡驱动日期不能早于1/1/2009，现在改为了1/1/2008，这样将极大扩充Flash Stage3D游戏的用户群，毕竟游戏公司不能强制用户去升级显卡驱动程序。

p.s. 我们应该感谢Adobe中国传教士团队和游戏谷公司向Flash产品经理团队的反馈。

Throttling event — This release introduces a new ThrottleEvent. A ThrottleEvent is now dispatched by the stage when the Flash Player throttles, pauses or resumes content.

点评：这个事件的添加将有效解决网页游戏最小化后自动降低帧频的问题。

p.s. 我们应该感谢Adobe China用户体验团队向Flash产品经理团队的反馈。

Mouse lock, relative mouse coordinates, right and middle click events — Create immersive, panoramic games with infinite scrolling to enable new classes of content, including first-person games.

点评：这个不用说了，鼠标锁定，右键和中键事件响应是很多游戏开发者迫切需要的功能。

Multi-threaded video decoding (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multi-threaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.

点评：多线程视频解码将使Flash视频继续保持对于HTML5视频的强大优势。

Flash Player background updates (Windows) — New versions of the runtimes can now be delivered more effectively to the end user with this enhanced updating mechanism (Background update is only available in the release versions of Flash Player).

点评：自动升级将更快的分发Flash Player到最新版本。可能要不了多久，90%以上的电脑就能自动升级到Flash Player 11.2了。

This beta release provides access to the AIR 3.2 runtime for Windows and Mac OS desktop environments and does not include a beta version of the AIR SDK to enable mobile, television and desktop application development. The key features and benefits of AIR 3.2 beta are:

Drivers gating for hardware acceleration relaxed — Previously, the hardware accelerated content was gated to 1/1/2009, however, we have relaxed the driver gating to 1/1/2008.
Throttling event — This release introduces a new ThrottleEvent. A ThrottleEvent is now dispatched by the stage when the Flash Player throttles, pauses or resumes content.
Mouse lock, relative mouse coordinates, right and middle click events — Create immersive, panoramic games with infinite scrolling to enable new classes of content, including first-person games.
Multi-threaded video decoding (Windows and Mac OS) — The video decoding pipeline is now fully multi-threaded. This feature should improve the overall performance on all platforms. Note that this feature is a significant architecture change required for other future improvements.

Flash Player的下一个小版本（11.3）将加入更多的游戏增强和视频增强新功能。

总结：可以看到这些新功能主要是面向游戏和视频，这也是Flash需要确保自己绝对优势的领域。随着Flash Player 11.2的快速普及，我们可以预见到网页游戏的3D时代即将到来了！

Refer: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/flashplayer11-2/
Refer: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/air3-2/

Free Ebook:
What’s New in Flash Player 11
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021698.do
Source: http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920021698/
What’s New in Adobe AIR 3
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021681.do
Source: http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920021681/