Sat down to to give the new version a test run. Overall verdict: rock on.
I never felt AH had a great sensation of speed after the removal of clutter overlay in AH 1 (ctrl - c, anyone?). It feels vastly improved. I think mostly the tile textures have the biggest effect with tree clumps, sheep, and other objects helping out.
The dense forest pockets with slight height variations give a nice semi-untiled effect (it better hides obvious patterns). I always had the feeling of flying over a colorful landfill... now we have mini-ardennes, juicy trees.
Now, brightness certainly is an issue with unaltered settings. Before the update I usually flew at a 1.25-1.4 gamma depending on the time of day. Bumping the gamma further in this version gives a washed out effect, so I had to alter the contrast, brightness, and gamma from the desktop first. From Control Panel > Display > Settings tab > Advanced > Color; I set them to the following:
Gamma: 1.50
Brightness: 5
Contrast: 120
I use more extreme settings for IL2, and it comes out very nice. Bumping the contrast seems to get rid of the washed out effect. Make sure you check "Full Screen 3D" so your desktop isnt insane bright after adjusting.
This screenshot was saved dark and ignored the settings. I used paintshop pro and manually altered the bright/gamm/contrast settings.
Before
After
