I got to the test the new version yesterday, and it's much faster than before. Now I can use scaling mode to play in 1280x1024 without suffering from framerate drops (which used to happen whenever in-flight comm videos were playing).
No artist has jumped forward to do maps for all the original ships Me and Eder bounced back our respective shader/ test map a few weeks back until we were satisfied, so standoff is a possibility atleast.