City Sample – invisible barrier / logical floor: characters, NPCs and vehicles cannot stand on actual ground

I’m working with the official City Sample project and I’m running into a very strange behavior that looks like a non-physical, invisible barrier / logical floor.

Player characters, NPCs and vehicles cannot stand directly on the actual ground or road meshes, they appear to rest on an invisible barrier above the geometry. Vehicles float slightly above roads, and characters never fully reach the surface. The ocean plane around the city has no collision at all, yet characters and physics objects can still walk and rest above it, as if there is a global floor
Pressing ALT+C shows no collision at the height where everything stops
This does not appear to be a hidden blocking volume or mesh collision

If I set the player collision to NoCollision, the character falls below buildings and roads, ignores the invisible barrier entirely, is no longer stopped at the fixed Z level. This suggests the barrier is not a physical collision object, but some kind of logical / runtime floor or system-level restriction.

Is there a hidden logical floor / runtime restriction in City Sample that prevents actors from reaching actual geometry? If so, what system is responsible for it?