I always took it for granted until I had some very much non-audiophiles over in my much too small for the big speakers I had, studio apartment. There is a track that starts with a skateboarder in a half-pipe. The friend who happened to be sitting in the sweet spot basically stopped all conversations and made everyone take turns listening to the opening of the track from the sweet spot. You can very much tell that there is height. The half pipe extends through the floor. Maybe it was expectation, and they were each familiar with the sound and could immediately contextualize it, but I doubt it.
I don’t know if showing height is a goal during mixdowns. I do know there was an project I read of years ago that was able to make a sound appear to be generated from anywhere in a room with a single speaker. I don’t know how much calibration was needed to adjust for room acoustics, but it certainly worked as a proof of concept.