What happened to the graphics in Canyon!? Help wanted

[tetris42]

It's been about a year since I last played Trackmania2 Canyon and I was prompted to download a high res graphics upgrade. I agreed. I was then a little shocked to notice that the graphics seemed WORSE compared to what I remembered. I ended up firing up a copy of Canyon that hadn't received the upgrade yet and discovered that it wasn't just my imagination, the graphics ARE worse in some ways. Some things to notice:

-The shadows on the canyon walls are darker all around. The old version really captured a hot desert feel, this one feels much more drab.
-On A9, the bloom from the lights is less noticeable now.
-On A9, the sky is darker and looks less vibrant than before
-On A9, the texture on the mountains in the background is muddier and less clear than the old version. Some of this is subjective, but that's a flat out DOWNGRADE.

So my question is, is there any way to restore the old graphics? Even though the extra brush is nice on the newer one, I like the lighting on the old one much better!

Screenshots (taken with "very nice" settings on both):

A1 (old graphics)


A1 (new graphics)


A9 (old graphics)


A9 (new graphics)