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This beta release provides access to the latest AIR SDK for Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android. You can download the AIR beta here: Download Adobe AIR 18 Beta - Adobe Labs
Below are some of the key features and benefits of AIR 18. Please see our release notes for full details.
New Features:
This feature will allow developers to update only the build number while keeping the version number same so that their application is available quickly on Testflight for beta testing. Now <versionLabel> tag will be used to populate CFBundleShortVersionString and <versionNumber> for CFBundleVersion. Previously we used only <versionNumber> to populate both the keys in info.plist. CFBundleShortVersionString will be the final release version application version of the application. This is useful in case of TestFlight because if developers do only minor changes in application , then they can only update CFBundleVersion to skip the app review phase by Apple(which is time consuming).
Air 18 introduced multi-threading support in compiler. With this improvement, we have gained around 20% in packaging time on the top of last improvement which was made in Air 17.
In version 17 of the Runtime, Standard Extended Profile was introduced for iOS and Android devices that support GLES. In version 18, Standard Extended Profile support is now available for Flash Player and AIR desktop.
Air 18 introduced multi-threading support in compiler. With this improvement, we have gained around 20% in packaging time on the top of last improvement which was made in Air 17. It is represented by a new constant ‘STANDARD_EXTENDED’ in the Context3DProfile class. This constant can be used in the requestContext3D and requestContext3DMatchingProfiles methods of Stage3D. The “standardExtended” profile can only be accessed if the swf version is 28 or more.
With OpenGL ES 3.0 a new texture compression technique i.e. ETC2 (Ericsson Texture Compression 2) was introduced as a standard feature.
ATF (Adobe Texture Format) is a container format provided by Adobe for different compression formats supported by different platforms. It supported three gpu texture compression formats till now which are DXT1/5(desktop), ETC1 (Ericsson Texture Compression 1) (android) and PVRTC (iOS). In AIR SDK 18, ETC2 support is added (Ericsson Texture Compression 2) in ATF. Now app developers can use ATF with ETC2 which will work both on Android and iOS devices which are OpenGL ES 3.0 compliant.
Earlier ATF could only be created for either one or all three texture compression formats, now user can use any combination of compression formats to create an ATF. By default –c argument in png2atf now creates an ATF having all four textures (etc1, etc2, dxt1 and pvrtc). Argument “e2” is introduced for creating ATF having etc2 texture.
This feature is enabled with swf-version 29.
ATF tools (png2atf, pvr2atf, atfinfo and atfviewer) are upgraded to provide support for etc2 for ATF. These tools will be available in the AIR SDK under the AIRSDK/atftools directory.
Please see our release notes for complete details.
Fixed Issues:
Known Issues:
About the Beta Channel
If you would like real-time notification for announcements related to the AIR Beta Channel please follow the Flash Runtime Announcements forums by choosing "Follow this forum" from the right-hand menu on the Forums page.
You can find instructions for getting started with this release here: AIR Labs Page