I have a question about render distances in nebula:
Right now, it seems that ships will gradually blend into the nebula background color the further away they are, until at one point, they instead stop getting rendered at all. This is normally fine, except when you have sunshafts on. Then, when you're facing the sun and a ship gets close enough to pop into existence, it starts casting a giant sunshaft shadow out of nowhere, even if you can't see it yet.
Best way to reproduce: Fly somewhat far away from a friendly cap ship, position it roughly between you and a sun, start flying towards it.
Is this an engine limitation or something that needs to be tweaked in FRED? Btw, the missions in question are any of the retail FS2 nebula missions with cap ships, most notably The Great Hunt.