Flash Player 10.2 Beta Supports IE9’s Hardware Acceleration

Earlier this week, Adobe announced a beta release of Flash Player 10.2 that includes Internet Explorer 9 hardware-accelerated rendering support, previously previewed in Flash Player “Square.” Adobe writes, “we’ve seen significant improvements in Flash Player graphics performance—exceeding 35% in Internet Explorer 9 Beta compared to Flash Player running in previous versions of IE.” Other features of the new Flash Player 10.2 beta that mirror those available in IE9 include hardware-accelerated video playback and sub-pixel text rendering enhancements.
We applaud Adobe’s work to harness the full power of the PC and their use of the new hardware-acceleration-friendly ISurfacePresenter interface of IE9. This new IE9 interface is intended specifically to improve the performance of DirectX-based ActiveX controls.
If you’re one of the over 15 million users who have now downloaded and installed Internet Explorer 9 Beta and you’re in a beta kind of mood, you may want to check out this beta version of Flash and see how it performs in your environment. Like all beta software, the beta of Flash Player 10.2 is pre-release software and may have bugs and other incompatibilities.