I know there is work ongoing towards a Nanite landscape, but if that doesn’t hit then no WPO will not resolve the lack of landscape displacement in UE5.
The main reason is that landscapes currently are not dense meshes. The way UE4 resolves this is of course by first tessellating the mesh so that it can take advantage of displacement…but since tessellation was removed in 5.0.0 then we will either need Nanite Landscape or the Proprietary Nanite Tessellation they indicated they have been working on (which I think is cooler since it can potentially apply to all Nanite objects, not just landscapes).
So in UE5, even if landscapes support WPO, there will also need to be some solution that allows them to be more poly-dense first otherwise this alone will not solve the issue. However given that they are working on Nanite landscapes and Proprietary Nanite Tessellation then I imagine that this is the solution they have in mind here.
I haven’t looked at the 5.1 branch (github main branch) yet but it would be a shame if 5.1 shipped with WPO on Nanite assets without addressing this limitation for landscapes. I’ll also be curious to see what happens with landscapes from older engine versions.
i.e., would a landscape created in 5.0.3 need to be completely re-sculpted for 5.1 if it ships with Nanite landscape or will older landscapes be converted? This is something that someone who has looked at the current 5.1 build might be able to answer (if this is in there yet).