I try to create a world like game “Only Up!” I try to create surrounding the character. The city view is needed only bottom and sides. And a sky on top. All of this views should be as a texture. Because meshes only be used on climbing area. These will be located at the center of SkySphere static mesh.
I tried “HDRI Backdrop” plugin to implement this world but Its not useful for this case. Because character always changes position to up and this movement make worse the scenery. I also covered the SkySphere with a texture of a city scene but there was a big hole at the bottom.
As you can understand that I dont want to create a lot of meshes for a distant city scenery but I also can not do it with a texture.
Basic skybox - not good enough parallax for you
HDRI Backdrop - perspective locked to one point
I think you’ll need to go the 3D geometry route. You could use PCG to scatter primitive boxes on a landscape as a proof of concept. The actual sky portion can just rely on the built in atmospheric fog.
What’s the main problem with the 3D building approach? There are a lot of such assets available from Fab or Epic sample projects, and they are relatively straightforward to make in the first place. A bunch of Nanite boxes shouldn’t be a big performance hit.
You can also draw inspiration from the Ladder to Space project from Cory Williams. You can see some clips of the experience in that video. The ground was built using Cesium, which streamed in Google Earth data.