Adobe demonstrated the newest iteration of their infamous Flash Player today, bringing version 10 into the limelight. The new version is not ready for production, but promises a host of new features to make its eventual release worth waiting for. At least that's Adobe's stance, who want to maintain their control over the "interactive media" market with Microsoft and others now chasing them down.
The new Flash Player 10 is available as a beta, and incorporates functionality such as 3D animation, more filter effects, hardware acceleration of flash, better use of available bandwidth, a better API for programming in flash and more. There's no specific mention of the final release date for Flash 10.
The most interesting component of the new flash series is definitely going to be the hardware acceleration. Combined with more advanced rendering capabilities like 3D animation, Flash is going to end up putting a lot of demand on a system - but with hardware acceleration at their disposal, Adobe opens up Flash to a much wider range of applications. Flash "environments" will be much more feasible in those circumstances.