Adobe releases Flash 14 and Air 14 with anisotropic filtering, Intel x86 Android support and Gamepad API

Adobe today released Flash Player 14 as well as the Air 14 Runtime and SDK. Both are considered major quarterly releases, and include new features, as well as the usual bug fixes and security updates.

Both tools have received a new anisotropic filtering feature, which the company describes as a texture-sampling filter for enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles. Interested developers should know there are two ways to enable the feature:

• In AGAL, set one of the values – anisotropic2x, anisotropic4x, anisotropic8x, or anisotropic16x to the filter option in the sampling instructions.
• Call Context3D::setSamplerStateAt with the 3rd parameter “filter” being one of the values defined in Context3DTextureFilter –ANISOTROPIC2X, ANISOTROPIC4X, “NISOTROPIC8X, or ANISOTROPIC16X.

Adobe has also added support for Intel x86 Android to Air. The new ADT command line option -arch allows packaging apps with Android x86 support (the command is optional: armv7 is assumed otherwise). The company offers the following note about this addition:

Please note that currently only captive runtime packaging is allowed for x86 architecture. This means all APK targets (apk, apk-debug and apk-captive-runtime) will forcibly be packaged with captive runtime. Feedback on this approach is encouraged.

Last but certainly not least, Air Gamepad lets app developers access Android gesture events, touch events, accelerometer events, vibration, and customize the gamepad screen by applying their own skins. The Air Gamepad API enables Flash-based browser apps to connect to a paired Android device running the Air Runtime app, meaning the Android devices can be used as game controllers as well as second-screen interfaces.

For more information, check out the full release notes at the link below.

➤ Flash Player 14 and Air 14

See also – Adobe issues fix for Flash flaw allowing attackers to remotely control Windows, OS X, and Linux computers and Adobe announces rapid release cycle for Flash, starting now with version 11.5

Top Image Credit: Ian Usher / Flickr