It is the plan to include the B3D Model Plugin in the next release and depending on feedback and my own experience with handling models there will be further improvements to this.
The scope of B3D is geared towards generating a retro look so in general it's not really a priority to go heavy on materials. However emissive color and texture for example are already being used since the introduction of the glow layer.
And normal map support is definitely planned.
Also by the way if you take a look at the runtime.js of the main plugin you might come across a commented out line referring to "PBRMaterial". Meaning I have been toying with these things and thankfully Babylon.js is fairly capable.
Regarding things like first/third person camera behaviors: in my view these should come in the form of examples. Similar to some that are already provided but more in depth.
Feel free to drop me a few lines: pixelrebirth@gmail.com