“Maybe the practice of storing different aspects of a prop is a historic protocol that no longer needs to be applied.”

I’m pretty sure no one anticipated the complexity of terabyte scale runtimes, so the design was reasonable at the time. It still makes sense in many cases e.g. multiple items referencing the same geometry as seachnasaigh mentioned. It’s nice to have the flexibility to place them where you want to though. Some programs can store everything including textures in a single file. IMO each method has advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation.

The only past problem I can think of would be if you had an .obj with the same name as the .cr2/pp2 and in the same folder. In the days of .rsr thumbnails, the geometry ‘cache’ .rsr would probably overwrite the thumbnail the first time you used the item. People putting the .obj in the same folder had to use a different name e.g. ball.pp2 and ball_geom.obj.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken