I've been really excited about the new hardware accelerated Stage 3D option in flash, but after doing a bit of reading on it I've found out that it will only be supported by graphics cards with drivers newer than 2009 that support Pixel Shader 2+.

I'm wondering why Adobe made the decision to do this seeing as how most flash gamers/developers are in the casual market where older/slower computers are the norm. I looked to see if I could update the driver on my computer but the latest driver I could find was for 2006, so no deal. And anyway, what casual gamer is going to go to the trouble to update their graphics card just to play a flash game. They have a software option, but it's not worth spending any time developing for it in my opinion.

So I'm just wondering how many people here can actually use the hardware rendering.

I found a good test here: http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash 11-stage3d-tutorial-handling-init-erro rs/

Make sure you've installed the latest update of the flash player (version 11) then scroll down past the tutorial part to the first example in that link. It'll say in the top left "3D Mode." Mine says "Software (Direct Blitting)." I think if it's running on your hardware it'll tell you "Direct X" or "Open GL."