I've searched pretty thouroughly (I think) and found much discussion but little resolution on this topic; and I wonder if maybe it has been solved since those threads were posted several years back:

how can I set up my sky sphere so that it does not appear to intersect level geometry or LOD terrain? Can I tell the engine to render objects that are actually beyond the skysphere model as between the skysphere and the camera, through some trick of the z-buffer? Or would I be better of scaling my skysphere model so that its radius is the clipping distance, and using fog as a cheap cover up? (I'd much prefer the prior, if it is possible)