Absolutely agree with this post.
ED should start taking these community requests to heart sooner than later. Especially when the option is only affecting the visuals of the player changing the settings and not others. Adding a higher quality shadow map doe snot give player an edge over others, so why is this even locked down???
If they do not want to remove the file from integrity checks, maybe at least add ultra shadow settings to the file at their end. Tally Mouse has a fantastic video that explains how to edit this file and achieve better visuals in DCS, if your graphics card allows for it. The changes he proposes is due to DCS not including Ultra shadow settings in their launcher or options currently.