UE3 poised for web dominance with Flash capability

Forget everything you’re reading about Apple’s new iPhone technology – the most impressive development for games in the last 24 hours is this: Unreal Engine 3 now runs in Flash.

Unveiled by Epic Games Chief Executive Officer, Founder and Technical Director Tim Sweeney during a keynote at Adobe’s MAX 2011event, a live demo showed how a high end game like Unreal Tournament 3 – originally a PS3, 360 and PC titles – can be run in realtime on Flash 11.

Flash Player 11, released on Monday, features a hardware accelerated, programmable graphics pipeline, meaning it can host triple-A-style content made in UE3.

“With UE3 and Flash, games built for high-end consoles can now run on the Web or as Facebook apps, reaching an enormous user base,” said Sweeney. “This totally changes the playing field for game developers who want to widely deploy and monetize their games.”

Flash, of course, has become a lynchpin of the web, and many games functions online. Facebook games and many online casual games run in Flash. The new version working with UE3 will "usher in the leap from simplistic 2D game experiences to world-class 3D gaming on the web" according to Epic.

“We’re excited that Epic Games is tapping into the latest capabilities in Adobe Flash Player 11 to power its Unreal Engine 3,” said Emmy Huang, group product manager, Adobe Gaming Solutions.

“As the console of the web, Flash is delivering immersive gaming experiences across screens and we’re thrilled to have Epic Games using Flash Player to deliver its blockbuster, premier 3D games on the Web.”