manitouguy, those long ground shadow aren't in this version. There is still a lot of work to make them work properly and before that I need to fix some new bugs (like the Death Star shadow which is a gecko pointed out is bug in terrain details blending) and then I'll continue working on them.

Glubber, it seems that the ground is drawn with a very thick fog in the distance, but the sky is still clear and thus much brighter than the ground. I agree it looks very weird.
I noticed it happens only for certain weather settings so maybe something is set up incorrectly, or it is just an odd limitation of CFS3 engine - it has to use fog to limit the view distance.
And by the way, I'm looking (although with lower priority) into improving sun glare effect, so there's a chance I'll fix this weirdness someday.