There are many different evaluation method for the view impect analyses.
Some of them using only physical data like topography difference in a cell, slope, forest area in a cell, water body area size in a cell, urban area in a cell etc... Cell size equal the grid size of your study. It depends on how size your area or what you are expecting from the study.
You can check some paper using fallowing keywords on searhing engines:
Landscape impect analyse
Visual impact assessment
or check teh fallowing book:
Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment published by Routledge on behalf of the Landscape Institute & Institute of Environmental Management, 2013
You may find usseful the VRM (Visual Resource Management) by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) of the USA ministery of agricultura. It has been, in escence; very useful for me, my colleagues and students. We have addapted many of their concepts (manual 8431, f.e.) to our reality, and applied the new versios according to scale, type or purpose of our rerearch or projects. You find it easily through the web. Success