Its shocking how primitive most game engines are with audio processing. You get linear/inverse square falloff on volume over distance and perhaps reverb in some places and that's about it.
I also had a Vortex2 and it's not about requiring a high-end surround system, as I suspect even today there's still a significant amount of players with decent but not high-end audio. I was playing Quake3 with A3D before they patched it out with either basic stereo speakers or headphones and the placement was superb.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-tri...
There's only so much you can do with just a left and right speaker and MAYBE a sub.
That said, it does seem like there's new interest in spatial audio, so we'll see. Maybe with some spatial audio headphones, and especially if they add head-tracking so that a sound to your left moves relative to your head (and stationary relative to your body) as you turn your head to face it.