Adobe today announced that the pre-release version of Adobe Flash Player 10 software is now available in beta on Adobe Labs.

Adobe Flash Player 10 beta, code named Astro, comes with new support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, extensible rich text layout and GPU hardware acceleration.

For the first time, Adobe is enabling the creation of custom filters and effects that extend and can be combined with native effects in Adobe Flash Player for unprecedented creative control of rich content to more fully engage end users.
Custom filters and effects are created with the Adobe Pixel Bender toolkit, also available for no charge on Adobe Labs. Adobe Pixel Bender is the same technology behind many filters and special effects in Adobe After Effects CS3 software, the industry standard for creating motion graphics and visual effects for film and broadcast.
Developers targeting Adobe Flash Player 10 beta can now create their own filters, blend modes and fills with Adobe Pixel Bender by writing small pixel-shading functions that can be parameterized to create animated effects or change the effect on rich media content at runtime.

See demos and download flash player 10 Beta on the Adobe Labs site.