[Lukeskywalkie]

Having a bit of trouble following which SCP features are being utilized vs. out of date.  There's been a lot of cleaning up in my flags since Knossos - I basically add a few lighting tweaks and my preferred FOV and leave the rest to the launcher - but these days I don't even know which flags are important to leave on or off.  I know what most of them *do*, it's more a question of 'is anyone still using this to do cool stuff'? 
Specifically:

*Apply lighting to missiles:  Does this produce a noticeable change? Does leaving it off help performance? Neither/Both?
*3D shockwaves: I know this is as much preference as improvement. I'm mainly wondering whether 2D or 3D is where new work is being done, or if it's basically settled down.
*Framebuffer Shockwaves/Thrusters:  Is this a good thing? Is this a replacement for modeled thrusters or an additional effect? I've long since forgotten the saga of thruster changes over the years.
*Soft particles:  Does this add particles or just change how they are rendered? Is it worth possible performance cost? Does anyone work on these?
*FXAA: Is this still the only available AA method? Do most people use FXAA and presume I will when building assets, or do most people force AA externally? Neither?

And yes, I could boot up a mission with a lot going on and, one by one, enable flags to observe the difference, but I'm less interested in just the way it alters the game, and more what's presumed to be the new 'default' and why? 

If anyone has the time to fill me in, or point me to a thread, I'd really appreciate it.

[FrikgFeek]

Apply lighting to missiles:Pretty sure this flag has been killed off in nightlies a while ago. With the deferred renderer it both looks nicer and is faster to apply lighting to missiles so there's no reason to even have an option of turning it off.

3D shockwaves:The 2D shockwave effect is retail, the 3D one is not. That said, there hasn't been any recent work on either.

Framebuffer shockwaves: This provides a pretty nice "distortion" effect around shockwaves and the performance cost is negligible.

Framebuffer thrusters: Similar but more down to personal preference as the "heat gaze" effect this provides around thrusters can displace
them at longer ranges from certain angles(the blue engine flames won't be connected to the ship).

Soft particles: Changes how particles are rendered. Unless you're really struggling for more frames keep this on

FXAA: Yes, it's still the only AA method provided by FSO. You can use an SMAA injector instead since SMAA looks a lot better with only a slightly higher framerate hit.

[Mito [PL]]

While 3D shockwaves are a fun feature, I recall that you need a set of shockwave effects to enjoy them properly - IIRC if these aren't found, the engine uses normal 2D shockwaves, or something. I'm also not sure if MediaVPs supply these shockwave effects (they should be available as a separate download somewhere on the forum, you could just dump these into your MediaVPs mod folder). Sheesh, one more thing on the list of "To include in MediaVPs", I guess.
There are also a couple revamped ship models that came out after the latest version of MediaVPs was released, but I don't recall which ones were these. I'm pretty sure one is the Fenris, though.

There's also the lighting setup you could tamper with a bit. Look at this, for example: this and this.
Some of these settings you can change on the go in the Lab (press F3 in the main hall). Just remember that you need to select a background first. There's a lot of settings and sliders to have fun with.

If you feel like trying even more things out, I think you can use SweetFX or ENB to change your visuals even more. I think Darius was doing something with this recently, so better ask him .

[Nightmare]

3D shockwave effects are provided by standard MVPs.