re 2D skies: Yes, but as of Bryce 4? at least they're mapped onto a sphere, not a plane, by default. If you have the ram you can go for the planetary resolution in Bryce 5. A terrain that is 4096x4096. I've never even tried it. The highest I've gone is 2048x2048. But use the '*' on that big puppy and you can fill your world, your ram, your swap file...