There is an evident lack of long grass in the workshop version. This current Half-Life 2 does not recognize the long grass from the standard Cinematic Mod. It also does not use lax material rubble on d1_canals_01a and instead uses other brushes to avoid issues with the ground not being rendered. Workshop version does not use third party reshade software. The rest of the mod is visually similar and as detailed.

It is likely that there will be a workaround to grass in the future.