The improvements of the new version are multi fold; Besides big improvements to the render engine, game-play was also overhauled, but head over to their full change log to get the full picture.
Speaking of pictures, here a nice one showing the new glow effects on the world map:
(Maybe qudobup will be so nice and make a video of it too *hint*)
A3P 1.0
A3P (we mentioned it before) was also updated to its first non beta release today. You can check it out directly in your browser (a feature of the Panda3D engine used) or download it as a normal version (currently Windows only).