There were many speculations about next 10th major release of Flash Player, called “Astro”, especially related to 3D. Some people had said about hardware support and/or API based on Papervision3D. At last at Adobe Max 2007 there were shown some of 3D features (rotation of the plain, interactive object) of next gen Flash Player. It seems not so powerful as many excepted but this is very good direction, Adobe implements 3D techniques into Flash Player. Other new capabilities are related to better support for text rendering e.g. layouts (multiple text columns), bidirectional languages and new technology called AIF enabling custom filters and graphics effects written in special language - Hydra.

Related links:
About Flash Player 10, hydra and AIF on draw.logic blog
Astro at MAX 2007 on Justin’s Flash Blog
Astro on Adobe Labs
Astro presentation on Adobe MAX 2007