Away3D Updated for Flash 10, Looking Good
Away3D was updated to Flash 10 earlier this month. Flooded with final semester, massive workload and all the conferences #swsx, #gdc, #mix09 etc I missed the announcement.
It is looking pretty sweet with this mustang demo showing off the update. Pixel bender has provided a performance update for effects that shows nicely here.
The above demo shows some of what is possible with the update: normalmapping with ambient, diffuse and correctly normalised specular shading, without the need for layers. As if that’s not enough, a further Pixel Bender shader is applied to the view to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) effect on the highlights, something usually seen in much more 3d-rich console games. Special thanx go to Eddie Carbinfor donating an excellent normalmapped mustang model, and David Lenaerts for writing the HDR filter.
Airtight Interactive did a comparison a while back where FP10 rendering was faster against the olde version of Away3D, this update may change that will have to take a look. All away3d needs is a designer 
