Shawn: Hypertexture, if this is what you refer to, is certainly something that has a huge potential because it allows to "sculpt"  3D shapes directly inside of a primitive.
Last year I spent some weeks experimenting with Hypertexture. What I was trying to achieve was a real way to create 3D terrains. And, believe it or not, it actually works. IMO, it works even better than all other terrain options.
Of course, since the terrain is calculated in real 3D space, it`s slow to render. Also rendertime is directly dependent on the function used to create such a terrain. As soon as fractal nodes are involved, rendering is getting really slow. Personally I never went past using a couple of noise functions and one single fractal noise.

But the real downside is that the resulting surface is not fully supported by Vue yet. For example in the camera views you just see the primitive, but not the actual terrain that has been sculpted. Also the surface is not recognized by ecosystems. Therefore it becomes really frustrating trying to populate such a terrain.
What seems to work well however is the assignment of mats.

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