One of the things i've noticed is that the smaller autogen buildings no longer have shadows.
At the same time, I have heard many people in various places describe a feeling of "disconnectedness" when looking at current Cultivation, brought on both by the current squareness and lack of variety and the fact that the buildings seem be placed/sitting on the ground, but not "connected" to the ground.
I assume that this probably has something to do with frame rates, but I think a fairly low cost solution might be ambient occlusion. I've seen it work well in other programs on a wide scale with only a negligible fps hit, and especially in Outerra and FSW it "connects" buildings visually quite firmly to the ground.
Just wondering have the developers ever considered it?