why not just make the second lightmap (the distance one) a little darker so that when they mix, it wont be so bright.
either way i like the first one better. the results look much more consistant, and the extra brightness still looks good, although we might not have a fully informed opinion since i know sometimes a screenshot can look great, but in motion sometimes things can look really bad from the same scene.
Yes, you are right. In motion it does not look too convincing with a bright lightmap. The reason is that only dynamic lights affect spec and normals and the lighting from the map looks too flat. Thus I personally prefer dynamic lighting or directional lightmapping (radiosity normal mapping) like UDK, Source or Vision3d are doing.
It is really hard to tell. The pure lightmap is so great with fantastic soft shadows and ambient occlusion. But for my kind of geometry I need spec bumps to have convincing details. In a dirty industrial environment it could even work with pure lightmapping.
