I have no idea about the shadows but for me p3d is miles better in terms of fps to the point where i have re-tweaked the way i use p3d and fsx, while the settings i use now do give me better fps in fsx i really notice the difference at ybbn in p3d, 100% ai traffic at that airport is not a great amount of traffic but ive always had to remove ground objects to get 30fps with 50% commercial UT2 traffic.

I do think the BP=0 is really helping the sim now as that is the main tweak i use in p3d as i dont use the FFTF tweak as my pc is not up to the job and the only other tweak i use if the affintymask 14 as i dont like it when my tir lags and that fixes it for me.