I also heard a lot of complaining about CloD terrain before release, based purely on a handful of pictures Oleg gave us. Banana forum turned into the most active site of scientific debate about England's botanics and ecology. What's the situation now. I haven't seen a hate thread about CloD terrain for quite a while.
IMO, the combination of light, colour and models in CloD reach almost the photorealistic level. That's why I barely fly 1946 now, despite tons of interesting features made by TD and modders. Well, sometimes I do fly night mission in modded 1946, since the feeling hunting in the darkness is priceless.
Short version of my post: developers do not know how to make an aristic-touched screenshot

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