v3.5+ replaced the reflection enhanced shadows (which made things look glossy / mirrory / wet) with velour enhanced shadows. Velour-style shadows were popular in 2010's in games like Far Cry 3, where heading into a cave switched the lighting to a hazy fuzz that highlighted things. Apparently Asobo had a shader to do this in the vehicles / buildings pixel shader file, but it wasn't implemented in the game or nothing called it. So, I ripped out the functional part of the code, and got it working with everything (not just vehicles / buildings). In pic above, you can see the white frosty tops on the tires, and also the rocks in the dirt have enhanced white edges. This is the velour highlighting. The orangy asphalt in the lower-right is the specular shine "sunny trail" bleeding through to the shadow to provide a little extra body. The shadows have also been softened / lightened overall, as has AO.
v3.5+ replaced the reflection enhanced shadows (which made things look glossy / mirrory / wet) with velour enhanced shadows. Velour-style shadows were popular in 2010's in games like Far Cry 3, where heading into a cave switched the lighting to a hazy fuzz that highlighted things. Apparently Asobo had a shader to do this in the vehicles / buildings pixel shader file, but it wasn't implemented in the game or nothing called it. So, I ripped out the functional part of the code, and got it working with everything (not just vehicles / buildings). In pic above, you can see the white frosty tops on the tires, and also the rocks in the dirt have enhanced white edges. This is the velour highlighting. The orangy asphalt in the lower-right is the specular shine "sunny trail" bleeding through to the shadow to provide a little extra body. The shadows have also been softened / lightened overall, as has AO.