[Les]

The aircraft do look more flat and less connected to their environment without that ambient light effect.

It may just be my imagination, but I also seem to remember the bare metal patches on the weathered planes used to reflect their environment too. For example, when you rolled the plane, the reflection on the bare metal would change from green to blue as it moved from reflecting the ground to the sky. Whereas at the moment it just changes from dull to shiny.

There's a pre-release development update picture of a bare-metal Stuka showing this effect very clearly.

Hopefully the loss of these ambient reflection effects is just a temporary result of the major graphics overhaul that's under way. If they've been removed just to improve frame-rates, maybe they could be re-introduced as an ultra setting in the plane detail section of the graphics options.

It's one thing for the developers to tweak the overall look of the game, but it's another thing again to take effects out altogether.

As the OP and others have said, it's those kinds of details that help differentiate the current game from others, including the old IL-2. When you put them all together; the graphics, sound, flight-model and historical details, they add up to a flight-simming experience you can't get elsewhere. Take enough of them away or leave them broken for too long and the whole package loses it's appeal.