Thanks for testing this, Cec. Good to know, your conclusion pretty much sums it up and I love the way you always provide brilliant illustrations. Also, there are the tricks in VeroniQ's blog post about adding scenery.
I admit to a fondness for the 360° panorama textured sky. This works quite well if you - for whatever reason - want as little clutter in your plan as possible, have a distant view from the construction and want to limit the file size. The images below is from a sh3d file that compressed is < 192KB - where the sky texture and the curved tree line account for some 50% - the panorama background is a 1600×600 <40KB jpg stitched together with the Gimp. Sure, the result is pretty basic, but it will help visualize the view around the building and a will provide a lot of effect with little added file-size.
If the background has mountains or other objects that go far above the horizon, there are some distortion issues which may have to do with the equirectangular projection (?). And the 3D view and the photo-rendering seem to give slightly different perspectives (see feature request 668).
ok
