Best way to approach large terrain ground mist?

[stevesideas]

The mist will be viewed fairly close up...as in fairly close to a moving vehicle but needs to stretch into the distance over a large terrain. Any ideas of the best method to achieve this effect? It needs to be animated and look natural.

I was thinking of doing a smaller scale mist and then duplicating the phoenix simulation over the terrain and offset the timing whilst placing it on a loop. Is this an efficient solution?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hmm, I would think that you need at least two sets of simulated sequences - one for the close up, and one or more for the simulators you would place at a greater distance.

Since it has to move and swirl, it should be simulated and probably you won't be able to get away with a texture mapped smoke opacity in the shader, without running an actual sim, or at least not for the foreground simulator.