3D skybox vs regular brushes

You'll find it harder to design intricate building in the 3D skybox area as the units go way down and it's harder to get fine shapes. Plus, it can look a little blurry IMO. I like the way of creating some stuff just outside of your playing boundy within your map and then let your 3D skybox add yet another dimension. Just remember to func detail everything outside the playing area to help your frames.

AFAIK the benefit of the 3D skybox is that you can have things drawn at the correct distance without problems like:

• Slower compilation and lighting
• Having to clip it all off.
• People on slow computers can disable it.

In this case, maybe just leave it, since the props won't scale.

Now, when you get to things like city skylines, mountains, surrounding forests or deserts, clouds...

No problem having skybox stuff right in front of you. One issue would be that rockets go through skybox stuff, and stickies won't stick. So leave anything that close to the edge in the regular map.

One issue to leaving that stuff in your map is that it makes more visleafs, which cuts down performance. If you don't have performance issues with it then it's no big deal.

Most valve maps have similar 'buffer' zones. Like in 2fort, the trucks are outside play area, but there are no skybox models for them...

There are no skybox scale versions of half the props you are using, so it couldn't be done. Also, the 3D sky is rendered at all times from everywhere in the map, so it's best to keep detail zones like that in the real world and leave the 3D sky for terrain.