Define "soon"...
In my eyes, it's the most important issue right after the collision problems.
From what I understand the current shader system wasn't ment to be used as it is now. The hardcoded way the game decides which shader will be used doesn't give artists much room. (Still I'd say it's a good fallback for models without a proper material, later on.)
You should not only consider the programming work required for this. Once we have a proper material system, the FSU team will have to redo every animated glowmap and most of the effects (especially the shockwave), use optimized shaders for some objects, and maybe make use of a few additional features, such as lightmaps, a glossiness channel, dirt maps, detail textures and more.
It's a lot of work, but in the end FSO will look look and perform a lot better.
I don't deny that the materials system would constitute a substantial improvement in performance and graphical possibilities for the game engine, I just gather that its a LOT of work, requiring dedicated, skilled, and long-lasting coders. Besides that, I haven't seen any recent activity on the open forum (or those private forums that I have access to) that indicate that any widespread work is being done on this. That said, if there is chatter taking place out of those boards, or if someone on the team is doing a lot of work behind the scenes, I can't tell, and I know that since 3.6.12 is in release candidate status so primary efforts should, in-theory be towards its primary release, but I don't get the impression that the Materials system is "on the table" right now. So in summary, based on this assessment, I personally don't expect such a feature to make it into code "any time soon", which I deem as "not before 3.7".
This is not, I repeat NOT a put down to the team as a whole or anyone on it. I eagerly await any improvements made to the engine and I look forward to new builds with baited breath
even though I haven't loaded up the game in more than 2 years and even troll
THIS website to see what changes are being committed
even though I often can't make heads or tails of what it means sometimes. I just don't expect to see such improvements "for a while".
BTW I think Bobboau once worked on a feature for glow maps that worked like the one you suggested.
If I'm not wrong, it was based on an experimental material system.
I recall some discussion of simplified animated glowmaps, as I stated in my first post, about four years ago. I was just hoping that with my "not anytime soon" time expectations for the more advanced materials-based system, that perhaps a short-term alternative could be created with the system I proposed, if it was simple enough to create. If it was, then it it might allow some reductions in both memory footprint and download sizes, implemented sooner rather than later. When Materials does get implemented, then (again, it its something that can be easily done) it can be disabled or removed from the code, with proper notice given for any mod using it to switch over to the new system.