Just to clarify, the flash runtime only has two actionscript virtual machines: AVM and AVM2. AVM2 was a complete rewrite for actionscript 3 (AS3) and was introduced for Flash 9. The original AVM supports Flash 8 and below (AS1 and AS2).
Gnash never got around to supporting AVM2 (it's not at all trivial), which is why Lightspark is significant. That, along with better hardware acceleration which might actually help it outperform the official player!
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Just to clarify, the flash runtime only has two actionscript virtual machines: AVM and AVM2. AVM2 was a complete rewrite for actionscript 3 (AS3) and was introduced for Flash 9. The original AVM supports Flash 8 and below (AS1 and AS2).
Gnash never got around to supporting AVM2 (it's not at all trivial), which is why Lightspark is significant. That, along with better hardware acceleration which might actually help it outperform the official player!