17. When it fits

Good at

• Ground that changes during play. Raise, lower, smooth, flatten and paint while the game runs, stroke by stroke, with undo and redo (32 strokes kept by default). Plates and corridors cut and fill the ground for pads, yards, roads and rail beds, and you can undo or remove them later. See sculpt at runtime.
• The same ground on every machine. The same edits give the same ground and the same state hash on every machine. A packaged Windows build, as a listen server and its client, bakes the same ground as the editor for the same edits. See Limits.
• Large worlds. Tested at 64 by 64 km with a 1 m cell. Full-resolution tiles stream in around the cameras and the invokers you register (points that keep the ground around them loaded; 2000 m by default), and a far field draws the rest from an always-loaded coarse copy. See Concepts.
• Saves. Versioned save files. A save written by 1.0 or any later version loads in every later version, and an older plugin refuses a newer save with a clear error. See save and load.
• Multiplayer without your own network code. On a listen server the server keeps one ordered log of edits and sends it to every client. A player who joins late receives the edited ground, then follows live. The net layer’s C++ API is Experimental. See Multiplayer.
• Real elevation data. 16-bit PNG and RAW heightmaps, GeoTIFF elevation models and a one-time import from a Landscape, in the editor. See import a heightmap.

Not for

• Caves, overhangs and arches. It is a heightfield, one height per point. For a tunnel the terrain cuts the hill and opens a hole at the mouth; your meshes make the tunnel. See Limits.
• Nanite terrain. Not used, by design. Nanite geometry cannot be rebuilt while the game runs. See Limits.
• Dedicated servers. Not supported in 1.0. Listen servers only. See Limits.
• Mac, Linux, mobile and consoles. Windows 64-bit only in 1.0. The runtime modules build for Linux, but no Linux server has been run. See Limits.
• More than four layers at one point. Up to four paint layers per ground point, from layer ids 0 to 255. Painting a fifth replaces the lightest. See Limits.
• Keeping a Landscape in sync. Landscape import reads heights and paint layers once. Re-import to update. See Limits.

Against Landscape

Landscape is free, mature and already in your engine. If the ground never changes during play, use it. Each Landscape cell links to the page of Epic’s documentation it rests on.

Feature	This plugin (1.0)	Landscape
Change the ground while the game runs	Yes. Sculpt, paint, plates and corridors, with undo.	Sculpting and painting are editor modes. Unreal Engine 5.8 does not support editing a Landscape while the game runs: the header of its Landscape Patch plugin says runtime landscape editing is not supported yet. Landscape Sculpt Mode · Landscape Paint Mode
Save and replicate those changes	Built in. Versioned saves, and replication on a listen server.	Does not apply without in-game edits.
Nanite	No, by design.	Yes. Using Nanite with Landscapes
Paint layers at one point	Up to 4 per post, from 256 layer ids.	Weight-blended layers. Epic states no hard limit per component on most platforms; mobile is limited by texture samplers. Landscape Materials
Editor tools	An editor mode with New, Sculpt, Smooth, Flatten, Stamp, Paint, Ground class, Holes, Plate, Corridor, the feature list and Bake.	Sculpt and Paint modes, edit layers and splines. Sculpt Mode · Paint Mode · Edit Layers · Splines
Hardware ray tracing	The near terrain, within 400 m of each view by default, as a coarser copy of the surface.	Supported. Landscape is listed as a ray-traced geometry type. Hardware Ray Tracing
Grass, foliage and PCG	Grass from Landscape Grass Type assets (Experimental). Placed foliage follows edits. PCG reads the terrain through its own node.	Grass from painted layers. Foliage and PCG work with Landscape: PCG has Landscape data nodes, and the foliage system follows Landscape edits. Grass Quick Start
Distant ground	A far field drawn from an always-loaded coarse copy of the whole terrain.	World Partition HLODs, built offline with Build HLODs or a commandlet; Landscape has its own HLOD builder. World Partition HLOD
Caves and overhangs	No overhangs, it is a heightfield. The terrain opens a hole at a tunnel mouth.	Also a heightfield. The Visibility tool cuts holes for cave and tunnel openings. Landscape Visibility Tool
Graphics card time	Measured against Landscape in one scene, with Lumen and virtual shadow maps off.	Same scene. See the table in Same scene against Landscape.

That comparison holds for its own conditions, listed with it. It does not say that either is faster in general.