Molloby, having done some 3rd party work (free stuff) for the team that did PF, I can fill you in on why the carriers are kind of bland.
It's a side effect of the model format. PF is a revamped engine of the IL2:FB engine, which was an improved IL2 engine. IL2 came out... 4 years ago...? The fact that it looks even half as good as it does right now is a testament to how kickass it really is, and also part of the design philosophy: accuracy before eyecandy. A lot of the CPU power and GPU horsepower that would get spent on eyecandy and fancy textures in other games ends up getting spent on things like 300-400,000 triangles of terrain, accurate atmospheric coloration effects, but most of all, the flight models.
Those carriers are mapped with a single 1024x1024 texture, rather than smaller textures pieced together over the model. ALL the game models use a single texture, except the aircraft cockpits (which use about 30 or 40 256x256 textures). It's a tradeoff that they decided to make in order to even create PF, since Oleg Maddox is working on Battle of Britain right now for a 2005 or 2006 release. And you WILL need a new computer for THAT.
