One of the demos here at Adobe Max was a 3D racing game, running in Flash with 3D acceleration. It was enabled by a new set of GPU-accelerated APIs codenamed Molehill. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch remarked that with GPU-accelerated 3D, Flash games could come closer to console games in the experience they offer. Lynch also demonstrated using a game controller with a Flash game.

There are no precise dates for availability, but Adobe expects to offer a public beta in the first half of 2011. The APIs will be available in a future version of the Flash Player. Under the covers, the 3D APIs will user DirectX 9 on Windows and OpenGL 1.3 on MacOS and Linux. If no supported 3D API is found on a particular platform, Flash will fall back to software rendering.

One interesting aspect is that Molehill will also work on mobile devices, where it will use OpenGL ES 2.0. Apparently GPUs will be common on mobile devices because they enable longer battery life than relying on the CPU for all processing. I heard similar remarks at the NVIDIA GPU conference last month.

This will be a significant development, especially when put in the context of Flash appearing in the living room, built into a TV or on Google TV.