Will there be any speed improvements in the future?

like faster running of the character?

no I meant engine optimization, like faster rendering
don't take me wrong this engine isn't slow but it's not fast either, the speed is average
so I was just wondering if you're planning on optimizing it some more or not =/

I know, I was just joking
most of the aspects of the engine are already very highly optimised, im just putting quality first
but sometimes I can be enlightened by some idea which can bring more performance

You have to remember, optimization also has alot to do with how good you are to save triangles and such on models,
but yes, while it has good speed, it can be optimized at certain points, and since we dont get source code we have to rely on Esenthal to "optimize" it.

Like better instancing for vegetation, ala speedtree (not excatly like it ofcourse, but it gives tons of speed inprovements on open maps) everyone who knows it knows it uses some frikkin nice tecniques for vegetation rendering,
and fast lighting like the ENLIGHTEN (http://www.geomerics.com/products.htm) and Umbra like occlusion culling (wow !) (http://www.umbrasoftware.com/index.php?page=umbra)

Well, i can always dream can't i

Haha that's a lot to ask Sarora, but you're right it's nothing more than just a dream who knows maybe one day

I was already thinking about shadows, you mentioned somewhere that you added lightmaps, but I wonder, will that lightmap be affected by the ingame lights and shadows, like for example will my model's shadow blend with it or will it just add another one? Just saying because it would be cool if we could use baked shadows+ ingame shadows at the same time

yes you can use lightmaps + other dynamic lights (with realtime shadows) at the same time