Lucas Meijer

I frequently get emails along the lines of “hey, what do you think is a best for my project. director or unity”. The answer to that question totally depens on what kind of project you’re making. Let’s do a quick featurelist:

Unity3D

• superb 3D engine
• crap 2D support. No layered psd import, no 2d layout functionality
• wii support
• iPhone support
• webplayer support. plugin penetration +-0%
• webplayer with very clean install. Claimed by Unity to have a 50% succesful install rate
• standalone support (pc/mac)
• blazing fast scripting platform
• okayish documentation. not great, not bad

Director

• mediocre 3D engine
• crap 2d import pipeline, but great photoshop support trough PhotoCaster Xtra. Okay 2d layout capabilities
• flash integration
• webplayer support. My guess is plugin penetration is around 50% for mature markets. (*)
• webplayer with opt out google toolbar, and opt out Symantec anti virus included with installer. (**)
• standalone support (pc/mac)
• slow scripting languages
• horribly outdated and incomplete documentation

So who wins? It depends on what you want to do. Here’s my list:

• offline 3D application
  Unity wins bigtime. Better 3d engine, no serious downsides.
• online 3D application
  Unity wins, but a closer call. Better 3d engine. Penetration disadvantage (which I’ll get to in a sec)
• offline 2D application
  Director wins. Flash also already covers this area quite well, but I can see there is a niche inside the offline 2d arena where using Director makes sense.
• online 2D application
  Director wins. But Flash beats Director here. Flash has 99% penetration rate, and can do pretty much anything Director can do 2d wise..
• if you want to bring anything to iPhone
  Unity wins. Director is no option.
• if you want to bring anything to Wii
  Unity wins. Director is no option.

I think the only somewhat controversial item on this list is Unity winning the online 3d game category. “0% penetration rate, get lost!” one might think. But if we do some math, the difference isn’t quite as big as it feels (***):

Potential audience for Unity Game = Installbase + (100% – installbase) * successful_player_installrate.
Potential audience for Shockwave game = Installbase + (100% – installbase) * successful_player_installrate.

Not all the variables here are public. If we believe the numbers Adobe claims and Unity claims, we can fill in some:

UnityAudience = 0% + (100% – 0%) * 60% = 60%
ShockwaveAudience = 50% + (100% – 50%) * shockwave_install_succesrate = ?

I wonder if Adobe would be willing to share the successful install rate number with us. With the payloads, and the required browser restart, I would guess them being at 40%. I could be high, I could be low. If anybody knows the right answer, please let me know. Let’s fill in 40%.

ShockwaveAudience = 50% + 50% * 40% = 70%

So it’s a 60% vs 70% situation. That looks a lot different than 0% vs 50%.

Is there any market left for Director to compete in? In my list above I have it winning only in Offline 2D. A market that is already fairly adequately covered by Flash.

Naturally feature sets alone is not enough to base your decision on. If you have 3 experienced Director devs, and no experienced Unity devs, that would make the balance move more towards Director.
If you already have a few Unity devs, Unity would come out more favorably. I haven’t included price in the comparison yet, as my reference frame is mostly projects that have a scope where a $1000 license fee is not a big enough deal to base a tool decision on.

Am I being too harsh for Director here? I’d love to read your comments if you feel Director makes sense to use in a certain area that I don’t, I’d love to hear your arguments. Here’s some I can imagine coming up:

• director is extendable trough xtras
  So is Unity.
• but director also has this extendability in its webplayer
  Unity also has this, as long as you confine your extendability to a .net assembly. Also, the extendability in the shockwaveplayer brings up a very scary verisign dialog that will scare away even more users. Every sane dev I know tries to not use non-adobe xtras in online shockwave applications.
• this 60% vs 70% difference matters!
  It does. However, Unity’s much more efficient workflow easily compensates that difference imho. You’ll spend a lot less money developing, leaving you more money to make your content better.

Do you know more?

(*) Adobe claims a 58.2% penetration rate for shockwave 7 and higher. It provides no data on Shockwave 10 or 11. If you want to do 3d you at least require shockwave 8.5. So actual penetration rate depends on the shockwave version you target. 50% is my guess for shockwave 10 penetration.
imho, it’s a bit silly that adobe measures shockwave7+ penetration rate, as shockwave7 is useless, making the stat useless. At least shockwave8.5+ should be measured. And ideally a better overview of penetration by version would be provided. Emerging markets were last measured at 34% for shockwave7+

(**) The shockwave installer has a opt out google toolbar and a opt out symantec antivirus payload. However you always get “offered” (I would say tricked into) only one thing in a single instal.

(***) example used from a David Helgason blogpost.