The shader lookup is not automatic.
It doesn't seem an outrageous problem to construct the correct search path. I certainly have not specified 'Compositor' as part of the search path aircraft-side - so the aircraft-side search path already gets 'Compositor' appended - what is the problem in making it append 'ALS' or 'default' or whatever dependent on what pipeline is running?
I'm sorry, maybe I'm overlooking something, but it seems the kind of problem solvable in half an hour - compared to manually converting a gazillion of aircraft, that's a very good bang for the buck.
Could you elaborate why this can't be made to work automatically?
The flickering is what it is, it's inherent to shadow maps. I even implemented shadow map stabilization, but it only works for non-moving objects. Again, try bigger resolutions, and if that doesn't work just disable them. I don't think the flickering is that bad. I don't even notice it unless I pay attention to it.
Just to clarify - the flickering of the internal shadows is tolerable - given that we should have kept support for opacity maps and that opacity maps do not flicker, I believe that problem is under control.
The flickering of low vegetation and vegetation shadows however is two orders of magnitude worse - the z-fighting is a really big problem (for me at least). And yes, it is that bad under some conditions - try dense shrubland in Hawaii (it's less in effect for tall trees though) - I really got dizzy and developed a headache after 20 minutes - I am somewhat sensitive to these things, so it won't affect everyone the same way, but I wouldn't be able to use FG any more if it would stay that way.