Legacy Documentation: Version 4.6
Language: English
Web
Flash: Setup

Getting Started with Flash Development

Suggest a change

Success!

Thank you for helping us improve the quality of Unity Documentation. Although we cannot accept all submissions, we do read each suggested change from our users and will make updates where applicable.

Close

Sumbission failed

For some reason your suggested change could not be submitted. Please try again in a few minutes. And thank you for taking the time to help us improve the quality of Unity Documentation.

Close

Cancel

What is Unity Flash?

Note. Flash deployment licenses are no longer available and Flash will be removed from Unity 5. However, Flash support will continue throughout the 4.x cycle.

The Flash build option allows Unity to publish swf (ShockWave Flash) files. These swf files can be played by a Flash plugin installed into your browser. Most computers in the world will either have a Flash Player installed, or can have one installed by visiting the Adobe Flash website. Just like a WebPlayer build creates a file with your 3d assets, audio, physics and scripts, Unity can build a SWF file. All the scripts from your game are automatically converted to ActionScript, which is the scripting language that the Flash Player works with.

Note that the Unity Flash build option exports SWF files for playback in your browser. The SWF is not intended for playback on mobile platforms.

Performance Comparison

We do not currently have direct comparisons of Unity webplayer content vs Flash SWF content. Much of our webplayer code is executed as native code, so for example, PhysX runs as native code. By comparison, when building a SWF file all of the physics runtime code (collision detection, newtonian physics) is converted to ActionScript. Typically you should expect the SWF version to run more slowly than the Unity webplayer version. We are, of course, doing everything we can to optimize for Flash.

Other Examples:

Web
Flash: Setup