I'm getting some mixed feelings about this. I just recently started getting into mapping, and was considering making an off-road race track. Vehicle physics on map terrain has always been quite fun. Vehicles on bricks gets quite limited. I'm hoping an answer to that loss is somewhere in the future.
If I had to choose, though, I would go with the shaders. It will encourage more building, and make said builds prettier without dodgy video editing. I'm hoping that eventually the sun and sky can be changed safely for things like sundials.
But what does this mean for lights? How will they work with the shadows? And will it ever be possible to have more of them show up at once?
Will the vector lighting on bricks be pertinent, and could "spammy" building potentially slow things down relatively less if the method of lighting is changed?