Yes, actually flatpak triggered some interesting projects that are going beyong flatpak now:
- pipewire for audio/video stream management that allows sandboxing
- xdg-desktop portals to integrate the sandboxed apps in the host desktop environment and operating system. It's what allows the host DE ui to grant permissions (like reading/writing a file, accessing screen share, etc...)
It will depend how an app has been packaged, but when well done the sandboxing is invisible.