Adobe Pixel Bender, not for everyone :(
If you have taken a gander at the new Adobe Flash Player 10 examples and videos, you would have noticed a pattern: performance optimization. A great new feature is the custom filters. This new feature runs using the new Adobe Pixel Bender technology that helps separate the work load from flash player. The main benefit of this is that image processing in flash player 10 does not use any GPU functionality! The downfall of this new technology is it does not run well on all systems. If flash detects your system to be “too slow” (PowerPC was one example), Pixel Bender will run in interpreted mode. So I guess the whole message being passed to the developer from Adobe is to “Use At Your Own Risk” and realize that the new custom filters should not be used for every project.
Tinic Uro has a SPECTACULAR (long!) write up with everything you will need to know.