Faking infinite vegetation at distance in Unreal Engine with a single 512px texture.
We’ve all run into the issue where Unreal Engine landscapes look gorgeous up close, but completely lose their soul and turn flat near the horizon. Brute-forcing grass density or heavy displacements kills performance, so I spent the last few months looking for a loophole.
I ended up creating DistanceLushGrass, an early-stage, plug-and-apply material function that restores that lost distance depth.
Instead of adding geometry, it uses a spatially aware, temporally stable screen-space noise to hold volumetric detail. Because it relies on a single 512px texture footprint, the performance impact is almost unnoticeable and it works on top of any existing landscape shader.
It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to share the concept. How do you guys usually handle the "flat distance" curse in your own projects? If anyone has questions about the screen-space noise setup, fire away!