This is most exciting! So in this case the lightmaps would be externally generated from a 3D application, like Maya or Blender, right? It would be nice if player and NPC's were illuminated by the map in real time, but still it's no great loss compared to having no lightmap effect at all.

Since the lightmapping in the new kernel will be able to use normal static lights-- must the meshes surfaces be re-imported as octree instead?

Maybe the 2 UV solution would be more visually powerful, if you have better lighting controls in your 3D lightmapping application than the basic WED static lights, so you could use barn doors and scrims and create more complex directional lighting effects, use falloff distances, etc, than possible with wed static lights..

But which solution would run faster-- The fake workaround or the real deal ?