This is indeed just a conceptual study (hence the documentation so devs can understand quickly what was done and why) and it appears to work. I'd be delighted if we could integrate it into the main game at some stage. So far it works ok as a mod, I just don't know how I could push that into the game myself (I do remember  the controibutor must be registered and most of all, he needs to understand and be able to explain his code, which I cannot). And frankly, this is such a tiny function that we should not devote too much energy into and instead focus precious development time on more important things. Bottom line: if it s is simple to iuntegrate, go for it, if not, leave it a mod.  

Here are the heightmaps for my Scenario 1, 

I got the A24 version working by following the install instructions carefully. For Atlas, just open the .pmp file from the scenario folder.

maps 

That's expected, you need to download the prebuilt shaders for vulkan or build them yourself. There should be a script for it https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/src/branch/main/source/tools/spirv/get-nightly-shaders.sh