A) It would be a criticism if I thought these effects could be plausibly rendered with a similar FFT algorithm, but that seems unlikely to me. I think these results are "highly effective" given the toolset, which is not attempting to emulate the actual physics.

B) This project is not an all-out attempt to make lifelike water, it is described as an experiment. I am making an observation about the result of the experiment, not criticizing the project for failing to meet standards it wasn't holding itself to.

Neat that FFT yields great waves.

But ultimately, does that model model vortexes or other fluid dynamics?

Can this model a fluid vortex between 2-liter bottles with a 3d-printable plastic connector?

Curl, nonlinearity, Bernoulli, Navier-Stokes, and Gross-Pitaevskii are known tools for CFD computational fluid dynamics with Compressible and Incompressible fluids.

"Ocean waves grow way beyond known limits" (2024-09) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631177#41631975

"Gigantic Wave in Pacific Ocean Was the Most Extreme 'Rogue Wave' on Record" (2024-09) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41548417#41550654

Keep in mind that this project is aimed at video game developers, not oceanographers :) The point is to get something cheap and plausible, not to solve Navier-Stokes with finite element methods.

criticism can be positive, neutral or negative.

This not a criticism, but the comment you are replying to is a critique, not a criticism.