New user looking for tips and trickery for distant scenery

Hi everyone, new user developing a test VR experience, I am in the planning stage at the moment and I am looking for advice and tips on how best to represent far-off distant scenery such as mountains and distant buildings. Google did not turn much up as far as viable techniques particularly for VR.

The project is simply a VR experience where the player has a limited area to move around in, observing the world around him, the player will be on the top of a building with expansive views across a city, and into the distance, I want the scene to convince the player that they are in a massive place…

I think I have three possible options,

  1. Traditional skybox with large inward facing cylinder with alpha mask and horizon landscape texture, perhaps more than one cylinder to give impression of medium and far distance.
  2. Terrain with low poly assets scaled down to trick the user into thinking they are far away and some foggy atmospherics to compliment this trick.
  3. Level design to limit the amount of far-off scenery that a player can see, not a great option as I want the scene to feel like it is massive.

Comments and advice please,

Thanks.

I don’t think there are any extra considerations for VR when it comes to distant objects. A human can only perceive depth a relative short distance away. This also means UE can render distant objects in mono with no apparent loss of image quality.

AFAIK most games use a combination of skybox and low detail shrunken objects (possibly flat impostors).