What's New in Director 8.5 > Getting Started > Getting started overview |  |

Getting started overview

Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio offers several new features that enhance the capabilities of Macromedia Director and Shockwave movies. The main improvements of this release are as follows:

| Support for interactive three-dimensional (3D) graphics.
| Enhancements to the Shockwave Multiuser Server and Xtra that enable server-side scripting, multithreading, and file access. Using server-side scripts can dramatically simplify your multiuser movies by placing most of the required logic on the server.
| Support for Flash 5 and additions to Lingo that provide control over the new features of Flash 5 movies.

Where to start

To use these new features, you need to understand Director basics. If you are new to Director, start by reading Using Director Shockwave Studio for Director 8 and completing the Director 8 tutorial found there.