First of all, I'm happy this huge update finally came to light, and community help is leading it to become a solid engine for real projects.
I've been trying it out a little since it came out, and I like the improvements, I will surely post on github any issue I should find. And of course I'll be looking forward to seeing the long-time requested features that will make everything really worthy.
Talking about performance, there's been a great improvement, but I still call for a little more improvement on optimization.
To get a taste, I've been running The Big Escape on two systems.

The first one is an i5 4570 with a GTX 970 and 8GB of RAM with Windows 7, and I got a stable 60 fps.
The second one is an FX6300 with a GTX 760 and 8GB of RAM with Windows 10, and it went below 30 fps very often (unless I decide to disable all shadows).

Of course, the second one is less powerful, but it should not be a problem for it to run TBE smoothly.
And the "Disabled shadows" make me think a little more.

Let's keep going this way.

Shadows is always a big draw on resources in any game engine.

I still remember playing AAA games and always turning off shadows if it was available in settings.

Yes, so I would really suggest as a new feature to add “Disable Shadows” option in the menu, instead of just changing shader’s LOD.

Dynamic lights and shadows will grind any game engine to a halt, which why there is prebaking which uses almost no resources at all, other then baking lights and shadows first time around.So it isn't a problem with the engine and a bigger problem with end users not optimizing their levels and blaming the engine, effectively using resources and balancing levels has been an issue with users since FPSC classic.

Yes it had it's faults but a fair bit was the direct result of users.

When I first started playing with the U4 engine I created a small SciFi level with lots of shiny surfaces and panels with lights in and it looked absolutely stunning, then I added a bunch of dynamic lights and a few objects to cast shadows and stuff ... it took around 10 hours to build the level and ran like a dog! As it basically consisted of one corridor a staircase and a few doorways I was not impressed but remove the lights and suddenly it would build in a couple of hours and ran at a reasonable frame rate.

Thats’s why I think a menu with a little more settings in Standalone would be really needed.

why not just hit f3 and then test once the lighting is baked

that way you disable all dynamic shadows but still have shadows (that are arguably better looking)

@Bugsy At the moment, Lightmapping ruins the level.

@Cylo : Can you post a step by step and simple FPM using stock media to the issues tracker so I can take a closer look at the lightmapping issue you are having. Here is the issues tracker: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues

@LeeBamber I think it's happening on my old levels, when I try to lightmap under current version.

Look at this little example.
Weird shadows on the building, and a strange net on the terrain.

Also, after being lightmapped, this level becomes unplayable with lagging movement.

I still don't figure it out, so I'm afraid I'll have to redo old maps from scratch...

Can I check out one of your FPM files ?

I could send this sample map if you need, to give it a look.