Sounds like this is really going in a great direction, and I'm looking forward to playing around with it. I've been using RFB as the basis for my install since it came out, but since it kinda stagnated for a while I've wound up with a pretty extensive list of mods overlaid on top of it, and it would be really nice to have more of the realism-oriented mods incorporated into the RFB framework. I really like the idea of splitting out the core realism elements from some of the "eye-candy" elements, but also of having some of the major "eye-candy" mods made available as "RFB-compatible" so they can be installed together for those who want to do that without having to do the complicated merging themselves.
Kudos to swdw for taking this on, and to all the folks here that I know will be lining up to help out