This is fantastic news. FreeType rendering was already pretty good for common FOSS fonts in the recent versions unless the distribution crippled it, but a pet peeve of mine was that Microsoft fonts have never seemed quite right (as demonstrated by the OP in https://s31.postimg.org/t5trkfd2x/freetype_264_consolas_v35_...).

KUDOS to all contributors, especially for the last few release of FreeType which really rocked!