It's official folks - Flash Player 10 was announced about 4 minutes ago and is in Beta up on Adobe Labs.

Flash Player 10 brings several huge new features to the flash world, including support for an entirely new set of dynamic filters and native support for 3d objects. This is due to FP10's support for native hardware accelerated content - something that wasn't available in previous versions of the Flash Player. FP10 also provides enhanced text support for all you typography junkies, better performance in general (again linked to the CPU acceleration), a more sophisticated drawing API, and enhanced support for video.

The new image filters allow you to do some pretty sweet stuff that was previously reserved for pre-rendered content or desktop-only apps, like these:

Blender filter:

Swirl filter:

Play with the "Pixel Bender" yourself here (requires FP10.)

Here's a full feature list from the Release notes:

Creative Expression

• Custom Filters and Effects


• 3D Effects


• New Text Engine


• Text Layout Components


• Drawing API Enhancements


• Color Management

Visual Performance Improvements

• GPU Compositing


• GPU Blitting


• Anti-Aliasing Engine (Saffron 3.1)


• Vector Data Type

Rich Media

• Dynamic Streaming


• RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)


• Speex Audio Codec

Other Community Requested Enhancements

• File Reference


• Dynamic Sound Generation


• Large Bitmap Support


• Context Menu


• GB18030 Compliance


• Ubuntu OS Support

For more detail on features, see the official release notes (same links as above.)

See the official Adobe press release here for more info, and be sure to hit the Labs page for the player itself and all the dirty details.

Wired coverage
Marketwire Press Release
Computerworld's coverage of FP10

Totally awesome Flash Player 10 "Astro" logo by Juan Sanchez - this is not the official logo of the Flash Player.