Web Player???

Unity Engine
1

Hey all…
Question and comments for ya’ll…

Has Unity or anyone figured a way to install the web player to a target machine without the user knowing?
Or, Has Unity made the Web Player more user friendly?
Or, better yet… non-existent…

I am attempting to sell my Projects as Marketing tools to and for Non-Gamers who get confused having to go through the Web Player installation process and therefore I am losing sales…

I sure wish something was done about this which would make games made with Unity even more popular with way more groups of people.

Why not make the Web Player part of the game or project?
I mean let’s make Unity Web Projects more user friendly for even computer illiterate folks…

2

The plugin is needed to run the webplayer. You could always buy the Flash exporter, as most people do have Flash Player installed on their systems.

3

Yea. rab236… Thanks for the input but Flash has its disadvantades too… Mostly Terrains are a major issue… Other things too…

What we need is SMOOTH SAILING for everyone…
That Web Player Installation issue is a REAL problem…

Maybe what should be done is make a deal with Microsoft and Apple and have the Web Player Factory installed on all new machines…

Come ON Unity… Lets Get with the PROGRAM here… !
Unity… Your product is frickin’ awesome…
But…
PLEASE do something about that dam WEB PLAYER !

4

It would be nice to have the web player preinstalled, but the Unity web player is a niche market. Flash is used extensively for a multitude of reasons across the entire Internet. Unity is primarily used for games, and there certainly aren’t as many Unity developers as there are Flash developers. Multiple online portals now accept Unity along with flash content, but the use of Inity still isn’t enough to warrant it being a built-in feature. It would be a humongous effort to rewrite the entire engine for the sake of an embedded web player. I agree that it should be more accessible, but Flash export should be the way to go evebtually. UT said they will be continuously adding in more Flash support.

5

Man…
Rab236… you are right in many ways…
But…
Flash has major issues too…
Ya can’t use Unity Terrains through Flash… That sucks… !!!
And… Terrain meshes would be ok except that ya can’t paint trees and Flash has a max vertice count that is way too low… Not acceptable…!!!
And you can’t use shaders properly with satellite imagery on terrain meshes through Flash… Not acceptable either… !!!
Flash is for small simple projects… Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Anyways…
Thanks rab236

6

Hi @TerraSame1

We probably wouldn’t do that, may cause security problems and I can imagine most people wouldn’t want software installed on their machine without knowing it.

I would argue the WebPlayer installation process is user friendly, all that is needed is a few clicks or less to get the plugin installed.

Maybe you could be a bit more descriptive in terms of where exactly in the process the users are getting confused?

Thanks and look forward to your feedback,
Chris

7

CreativeChris…
Thanks for the reply…
“…you could be a bit more descriptive…”

I will attempt… Bare with me and use a little imagination…

Here is the situation… For a minute… pretend that you are computer illiterate… or maybe you know the computer fairly well but you are not a gamer and not really up on the software end of the CPU… But you are high up in your field but it is not a technical field…

Ok, someone comes along and suggests you have a look at a cool project that they created that they say could benefitt you and your company in many ways…
So, you have a look at their web site pics and videos etc… and you agree that the concept looks viable and the project has potential… and could really benefit your company…
So you then are given a couple of links to actually check out the demo…
All is looking pretty good…
.
(BTW… You and I and pretty much everyone knows that if you are surfing the web and a site doesn’t load like “Right” now… you are probably going to hit your back button after waiting about 10 seconds… MAX…

Ok then…
You are now looking forward to experiencing the demo and you have two choices…
1.) A direct link and 2.) a link to a Facebook page that has a tab to the same demo…

So you think… I want to check out the Facebook page as in this Socially connected web world, that sounds pretty cool…
So… you click on the link and instead of instantly launching the demo inside the Facebook page you get a window that says you need to install some strange software… You are like WTF…! "I was looking forward to this demo but you ask yourself… “If I buy this marketing tool for my company, is everyone going to have to add this strange software?”
Then you say to yourself… “Screw this! This sucks!”
And you drop the whole idea…

So not only does you the manager of a big company loose out but the demo creator looses out from missing the sale (That’s me.) and in the long run Unity looses out because they could have got the attention of the big company and even more importantly now all those people who would have experienced the really cool marketing tool and experienced “Gaming” for the first time, now lose out and therefore Unity losses out in the BIGGEST way…

See… In the long run… Unity is hurting themselves along with all those others that now will not experience the awesomeness of Unity and very cool 3d Dynamic Marketing tools… That was a sort of round about way of telling both you and Unity that making everyone and or anyone that they need to go through “Another Process” (Adding the Plug-In to their CPU" ) when most people will not give a site more than 10 seconds to launch…

Anyways…
I really think Unity should make the Web Player “Seamless” I mean… do something like add it to the compiled project or something that removes all possibility of people losing out…

Edit Note: Take a look at my Face book page and tell me what you would miss if you picked on one of the Custom Tabs and you didn’t already have the Web Player… Here is the link…

Once again, thanks for the response and thanks for your consideration…
Paul