Ok, just ran through those options but no cigar. The problem is that the camera is moving through the star field resulting in those very unrealistic BIG particle stars. With regard to the near vanish and fade, that simply adjusts the opacity as opposed to the size. What's been working really well for the "classic" warp fly-through is to use a straight gradient and mapping it across X/Z on the size layer map. That scales up the stars in the distance and whilst scaling the foreground stars down. However, once you apply "disperse" and a fractal displace it mixes up the direct relationship to the gradient.

I was hoping that using a complex OBJ model to generate a mixed star field would do the trick but unfortunately that option does not allow me to map the gradient over a specific axis. 

Jarret