I see what you mean about Hairworks. Nice animation, but the shaders don't quite look right. Though I'd be happy with static hair. I use dynamic hair, but mostly for posing, not for animation.

I like the idea of less dense hair if you're further away. Kirwyn did a sort of version of that for his Genesis dynamic hair (which was created before DAZ took the name - it has nothing to do with DAZ). The hair had two skullcaps, each with hair, so you could use just one for distance shots, and both for closeups.