Thanks guys.
I was testing some more stuff and I noticed an odd stand of trees off in the distance. They are in the center of this pic right near the cursor orb... contrasting against the rising sun:
The thing that I thought was weird is that normally by the time a forest would be distance-clipped like that, they are so small that we wouldn't see them. So I thought something funny was going on with clipping. So I went to investigate.
I ran at an angle (1.4 x run speed) for about 3 hours in game time to eventually come to this:
You can see by the stats that it's about 1 km away.
That would explain it. Just an isolated little string of small islands.
In the left of that image, off in the distance, is the familiar "spawn bay" where we started. A more direct shot:
Really far away.
I should also note that all of these screens were shot at 64 m clip. I find that it's actually an enjoyable experience these days and makes my testing faster. So I often run at 64 m clip now.