The new engine appears to have really sped up landscape rendering on my system and I like it. I'm wondering if there will be support for more 2D landscape like the sky however?

I've noticed that everything no matter how far away is rendered as 3D even at ranges where a 3rd dimension doesn't matter. If objects like trees could have 2D artwork instead then they'd take less memory to load and would load faster. It would also give the impression of greater distances because they could then be rendered 2D at even further away while still using less memory.