You can thank the eggheads behind the forum update for the missing stuff. Let it rip on the feedback section. Who knows. Maybe after a total of 300 posts they’ll do something about it.
As far as your issues go. Just use a render target.
A scene capture2d can capture the sphere, and write the scene depth into a texture.
You can then use that texture to displace the landscape.
Make sure you only capture the spheres, as you won’t really need much else.