The two projects appear to have implemented different parts of flash. Flash has several separate virtual machines, which have been introduced over the years with new versions of flash.
Lightspark only implements the newer ActionScript3 runtime, from Flash 9 (and newer), while Gnash only (?) implements some of the earlier runtimes.
Currently Lightspark can only run the newer HD youtube player (which is compiled against flash 9), and Gnash can only run the older player (Which I think is still used for VP6 videos)
Just to clarify, the flash runtime only has two actionscript virtual machines: AVM and AVM2. AVM2 was a complete rewrite for actionscript 3 (AS3) and was introduced for Flash 9. The original AVM supports Flash 8 and below (AS1 and AS2).
Gnash never got around to supporting AVM2 (it's not at all trivial), which is why Lightspark is significant. That, along with better hardware acceleration which might actually help it outperform the official player!
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Reads the bytecode straight from the swf. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks to be a lot further along than Gnash was.
The two projects appear to have implemented different parts of flash. Flash has several separate virtual machines, which have been introduced over the years with new versions of flash.
Lightspark only implements the newer ActionScript3 runtime, from Flash 9 (and newer), while Gnash only (?) implements some of the earlier runtimes.
Currently Lightspark can only run the newer HD youtube player (which is compiled against flash 9), and Gnash can only run the older player (Which I think is still used for VP6 videos)
Just to clarify, the flash runtime only has two actionscript virtual machines: AVM and AVM2. AVM2 was a complete rewrite for actionscript 3 (AS3) and was introduced for Flash 9. The original AVM supports Flash 8 and below (AS1 and AS2).
Gnash never got around to supporting AVM2 (it's not at all trivial), which is why Lightspark is significant. That, along with better hardware acceleration which might actually help it outperform the official player!