I still think about the sunsets in that game. Simply flying through the dunes in an ornithopter felt like the most epic adventure. It's such a miss that the Villeneuve movie made everything so white, on a planet with no condensation or cloud cover, where dust storms are a major plot point. Perhaps there is some science-y reason why it could happen that a desert planet would be all white, but it's so bizarre to me that a director would voluntarily choose that washed-out palette when at least to a layperson it seems intuitive that deserts not just on Earth but Mars too tint cloudless skies in glorious technicolor.

You're right there aren't really many - if any - other games like Cryo's Dune. Perhaps the closest experience I had recently was Sable, which is an open world style game where you explore a Moebius-inspired world with several distinct and beautiful ecologies. It's mostly just a slice of life walking sim without any conflict or political intrigue, but visually and emotionally it captures some of that epicness that I look for in Dune adaptations and other Dune-like space operas.