Thanks for the reply Mische.
Yes have already followed several tutorials online about mist pass and nodes but seem to get weird artifacts appearing or it doesn't line up correctly. I was thinking it was because my render is a full 360 degrees and not just a regular camera shot in one direction and covering 50mm view.
Will keep trying and see what these 'many things to tune for good results' are. I should also practice on smaller renders in Cycles as current time for high res 360 is 3hrs, 45 mins and that's if it doesn't crash
Interesting stuff though working with Blender and really enjoying it.