The new engine progresses really, really well! While it renders only painstakingly hand-entered maps, it does bumpmapping and proper (hard) shadows, and is considerably faster than the old one!
The downside is that to work at all it needs the ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL extension, which disqualifies the older 3D cards out there. Fear not, there will eventually be a mode of operation that will work without (though it will, unavoidably, be much left Nifty).