OK, here's my stupid damn idea:
using the skybox for teleporters. The actual is sky is really small, so it gives the impression of looking into another plane and each teleporter will have a totally different view. It also rotates slightly as you look around the entrance, because it's so closed in. It's kinda freaky the first few times you go through it.
It gives off eerie smoke, has it's own pulsating dark red/orange dynamic light and the clouds move really, really fast. It looks very nice when you see it moving. I may add other stuff into it, I'll have to see how things look when I get all of the other teleporters in place.
The good news is that since the areas with the teleporters are all portalled off, the main church room has had an fps boost since it doesn't have to bother drawing the skybox. The bad news is that I'll have to forget about the breakable windows. I think people would prefer a smoother game instead of something minor that doesn't have any effect on gameplay anyway.
And no, I didn't nick the idea after playing the Prey demo. I thought about doing this a couple of months ago, though I may have unconsciously been inspired by the Prey preview movie I saw last year.
