On my pics are planeshine and Skipper's: LightCarsmaster v2(beta). LightCarsmaster's somehow gives the refinement to the specular light IMO. Its more subtle but more realistic. It's not new map, just did some texture testing with nvidia photoshop plug-in for normal mapping in games (useful for BumpH textures in IL2, will post a link). Also antialiasing of 16Q and anisotropic filtering 16X on graphic card driver helps a lot. (Graphic card is old cheap Nvidia Asus 9600gt silent, not some new monster).
But enough of topic stealing
I too have noticed slight drop in FPS with latest Skipper's mod, but insignificant. I didn't look cockpits at all, but I noticed that sun is different and bright areas of the planes are more brighter than before. Which is good, it would be good if contrast can be increased even more.
Baron Wastelan's post reminded me that conf.ini settings could play some role in here. So, here is mine:
[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1
HardwareShaders=1
Shadows=2
Specular=3
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3
Sky=2
Forest=3
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
LandGeom=3
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1
VideoSetupId=3
Water=4
Effects=2
PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0
ForceShaders1x=0