Microsofts Silverlight has advanced to a level where it´s features and performance get contrastable with flash.

It took mere minutes to port Smart Normal from PixelBender (Hydra) to Silverlights shader Language HLSL (DirectX).
As with Astro, shaders are rendered via software – not the GPU.

The result is roughly comparable with this Flash demo of Smart Normal.

This was not intended to be a performance test but it clearly indicates that Silverlight isn´t inferior when it comes to video, shading or 2,5D.

C# is a mighty language -  easy to pickup for those who are familiar with C++ and working with XAML even feels natural to a Flex developer.

It has to be seen where Open Source, Google, Adobe and Microsoft will take the ‘web 3.0′ but Silverlight definetly has the potential to be a part of that future.
In general, competition is a good thing when it comes to software and the same applies to RIA runtimes…

View the Silverlight Smart Normal demo or download the Smart Notmal shader as HLSL *.fx file.

Hint: If you are looking for a PixelBender Toolkit replacement when working with HLSL try Shazzam.