Cath, I wasn't suggesting any issue about the rendered mirror ball being a stolen idea. What I meant was it is something worth discussing some more. I posted about it but nobody seemed that interested in the technique at the time, except for face_off. Plus, at the time, Poser 6 IBL could not handle high dynamic range image data so it was sort of a waste of time. Poser 6 LDRI IBL image cannot do justice to the scene lighting. Poser 7 can, so it is great to examine the technique more closely now. But before we discuss that, I'd really like to get these coordinate issues clear. Otherwise we are going to confuse ourselves, let alone everybody else.

I'm so glad you were able to verify the UV mapping problem.

Now what about this North->East->South->West issue? Are we in agreement yet? You must flip the image and look at it from the inside of the sphere, before you judge.

Here is a closeup of a very large (6K pixels wide) panoramic image if New York, mapped onto a sphere and viewed from the inside. I used the U_Scale = -.830199. You can clearly see the word "Verizon" on the Verizon building, and that is the Brooklyn bridge to the right. These positions and orientations are correct and match reality. If you do not flip the U_Scale, everything is backward.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)