Where I Think Director is Going

This is a tough thought to ponder. Since I may or may not know about what the engineers are thinking about for the next release, I would prefer to not think about the very next release. Instead, I will think about the far future — Director 13 or 14.
Mind you, this is purely speculation. A lot is based on what I would LIKE to see in Director, but I’ll try to think more about what I hear other people want. I’m just one voice.
I see video becoming more important. DVD content, whether on DVDs or embedded in the cast, will become a standard part of multimedia. Think of how video graphics have replaced still graphics on TV. This week I noticed that election TV coverage had a lot of video embedded into what used to be still images in graphs and charts.
I see the 3D engine getting at least one major update in the next few versions. I’ll bet they drop “Software Rendering” in favor of using more advanced DirectX and OpenGL stuff. All new machines come with some sort of 3D card anyway.
I’ll bet that old Film Loops and LDMs (Linked Director Movies) grow to be more like Movie Clips in Flash. There are just so many people asking for that.
I see a lot of middleware coming for Director. There will one day be a market for cast libraries and behavior libraries that will allow you to do various things. I see some isometric graphics middleware already.
I see the penetration numbers for Shockwave improving slightly, like around 70%, and not going higher. I also see us realizing that that is as high as it will go — the remaining 30% of machines just don’t need it. There are still a lot of business people that just access the net to get text information.
I see the number of Director developers growing versus the number of Flash developers. But not because more people will be using Director, but less will be using Flash. Flash will continue to grow more “business enterprise”-like and artists and creative types will use it less and less. SWF will still be the format for the creative people, but they will be using 3rd party tools like Toon Boom Studio.
I see the Shockwave and Flash plug-ins for Internet Explorer becoming “special” things that Microsoft allows to run, while other ActiveX controls are disabled by default due to security problems. They will also “bless” other popular ActiveX controls that are run by responsible companies. But they cannot continue to group these with the rest of the ActiveX controls.
That’s all I can think of for now. All in all, I see lots of tiny steps moving forward and no real revolutions. And I consider that good news.