That's exactly what's going on - VC meshed are drawn on top of "regular" ones.Here's another big VC item. It seems like VC meshes are rendered over other meshes essentially hiding them from view. I don't know if you can see it in the D3D11Client screenshot but if compare the two I think you'll see the problem.
I've fixed emissive lighting - pls take latest and try it out.After playing around with things I have gotten an impression that the D3D11Client is much darker than either the default D3D7 or D3D9Client. Even local lights which are plenty powerful otherwise lose much of their power and brightness in the D3D11Client.
Also on the whole VC darkness issue: Could it have something do with the emissive material settings? That is how VCs are "lit up", they make use of very high emissive settings. It almost seems like that isn't used on meshes that are loaded as VC meshes.
But I think using emissive settings for VC is fundamentally wrong - unless they are actual "real" lights, they shoud be lit up by local lights. I'm working on adding local lighting support so it will be implemented soon.