I guess I might be biased from having lived in Phoenix and the sunny tropics these last ten years, but there is definitely no highlights and clear contrasts in AH as there are in those pictures.
AH's lighting is flat, that means there are no shadows/specular highlights except on the vehicles and objects. That means the terrain itself does not have any such dynamic lighting to give the illusion of depth like planes and objects do, e.g. even in the previous 2.09 maps, anywhere around twilight time, not only was the lighting flat, but the ambient illumination value was dimmer still.
Not having light rendering other than that ambient lighting means that textures are no use in simulating real highlights and shadows, since time is not fixed in AH, i.e. simulating high noon contrasts would look out of place near sunrise.
In picture 252, the little buildings (below the "ine." of the Francecoastline.com watermark) are nowhere near as faded as they would be if they were textured with "true" colors in a 2.10 terrain.
2.10 exampleIn picture 836, the brights are as bright as 2.09 could be, e.g. the 4-lane highway sets off clearly from the darkish greenery around it. The big white hangar to the bottom left of the middle has very clear light reflection and scattering. You can't see this in AH. Paint an object white, and it will be a dull shade of grey in the present 2.10 lighting. It won't stand out nor scatter light onto nearby objects, and thats why, since no objects do this, I think the terrain textures are better off being too bright than too dark.
I don't mean neon bright, I mean only a little; the lighting engine needs a little help.
JB88's shots show it too:
http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=203121http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=203241So yes, the MA terrains will be better looking like what they are supposed to, western Europe in this case, but it really ought to not be at the cost of clear visibility in game... At least certainly not before the lighting engine is improved to correctly model it.
As it is, it's just too flat for it to work. Sunsets and Sunrises were already obvious clues of its limits.
The old textures were obviously biased in saturation and brightness, but at least we could see something then.
