Version 3.0 of Sandy is the first official AS3 implementation of the engine. It takes advantage of the new AVM2 possibilities and intensively uses the great additions added to the language in AS3.

First, as the Sandy 3.0 version is build on AS3 and AVM2, its performance is much better than the AS2 (AVM1) versions that preceded it. Sandy 3.0 can render at least 10 times more polygons than Sandy 1.2 (the last stable AS2 version).

The most common problem with earlier releases of Sandy was the difficulty of learning the API. Rendering performance was also a major concern.

So we worked on those two things.

We simplified the API a lot! Now, creating a demo with Sandy is really easy. The older Java-style API was nice but it had two major drawbacks:

• People working in Flash are mostly designers or artists rather than high level language experts/lovers.
• Flash does not require you to have a Java-like API, so we simplified a lot of the command syntax using getter/setter functions.

Now, the simplified API suits Flashers' needs.

Here are the new engine capabilities :

• Frustum culling - No more computations for objects that aren't in the camera field of view! Results in a very good performance boost.
• Frustum clipping.
• More materials (formerly Skins). New material implementations are very powerful and very easy to extend.
• Vertex normals. To create some amazing effects and materials extension.
• Complete bubble event system. Catch events directly at the object level or to the root node. Now, it is up to you and to your application architecture.

Even if AS3 language is not really different from AS2, the brand new Sandy API is!
But do not be afraid ;) The logic is still the same, and things are much simpler now. If you learned 1.x API, you'll learn this new version very easily!

I'm going to make it short: the port from 2.x to 3.x is VERY SIMPLE.
Once you are familiar with the few changes between AS2 and AS3, you'll have your example working with 3.x.

A Sandy application as always the same basis :

• a World that is the entry point
• a Camera to visualize the world and give a screen representation.
• a Group that links element of our scene and the world.
• a main loop to process the rendering