Distant Objects Enter View Suddenly - How Can We Fade Them In?

As an object enters the far clipping pane it suddenly pops into view. I want to have them fade into view. As an example, in all the trailers of No Man’s Sky when the ship is flying around distant objects sort of “fade in” through the atmospheric scattering.

In Unity would this best be accomplished through a specific shader or programatically?

NOTE: I tried using fog and it only half works. Things still “pop” into the view, they are just a solid fog color. I want them to fade in more naturally. Also, I have no experience writing shaders, so any advice is welcome.

LOD group’s support passing an alpha value to your shaders based on distance, so you can cross fade LODs, or fade them out as you LOD them out.