I recently tested the lastest version of Racerboy's exhaust smoke mod. The smoke was hardly to be seen under most speed settings. Only when going at flank speed there was a black cloud of smoke. And even that wasn't too thick or to big to make the whole thing look unrealistic.
I think both mods would give some great looks to the game.
Considering performance though, the many particle effects may produce a noticeable workload. On the open ocean I rarely have any problems, and my PC is quite old now (Athlon XP 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9800 Card
).
But when encountering convoys or leaving/entering the home port, this might get a little bit too much at times ^^.
The video looks very nice, btw.
Is the issue of the water streams not stopping to flow fixed by now ?
It looks like they are flowing for a little while and then stopping until the next wave washes over the deck.