Epic Games continues to add amazing new abilities to Unreal Engine 3 and this one seems like it could be huge. During a keynote at Adobe MAX 2011, Epic Games' head honcho and all-around genius, Tim Sweeney, today presented UE3 tech running fully inside an Adobe Flash-based environment. The live demonstration was of a visually-enhanced Unreal Tournament 3 zipping along in Adobe's Flash Player 11.

Naturally, this feature will also be available to licensees of UE3.

UE3 is constantly evolving, with new breakthroughs, technologies and optimizations for multiple platforms. Flash Player 11, with its hardware accelerated, programmable graphics pipeline, is now capable of running triple-A gaming content authored for high-end platforms using the industry's latest tools and technologies.

Flash Player is a key technology for gaming on social networks and the Web, and with UE3 will usher in the leap from simplistic 2D game experiences to world-class 3D gaming on the Web. With its new hardware-accelerated Stage 3D APIs, Flash Player 11 allows 1,000 times faster 2D and 3D graphics rendering performance over Flash Player 10. Developers can now animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver console-quality games on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions.

"With UE3 and Flash, games built for high-end consoles can now run on the Web or as Facebook apps, reaching an enormous user base," said Sweeney. "This totally changes the playing field for game developers who want to widely deploy and monetize their games."

"We're excited that Epic Games is tapping into the latest capabilities in Adobe Flash Player 11 to power its Unreal Engine 3," said Emmy Huang, group product manager, Adobe Gaming Solutions. "As the console of the web, Flash is delivering immersive gaming experiences across screens and we're thrilled to have Epic Games using Flash Player to deliver its blockbuster, premier 3D games on the Web."