4.12 has:
- Landscape is now in the global distance field. Distance is computed with an approximation - the heightfield is sampled once directly below and a plane is constructed from that height + normal. The distance is computed from this plane. It works well unless there’s significant curvature in the landscape below where you’re trying to use the global distance field.
- Control over the MaxOcclusionDistance of the global distance field in WorldSettings. Increasing this makes the global distance field cost a lot more to compute though! If using the gradient you should fade its contribution out based on DistanceToNearestSurface.
- Control over how far from the camera the global distance field will cover, in WorldSettings.