Quote - I see the link to your Environment Sphere. Where did you get the "equirectangular image"?

I don't remember where I got that particular one, but there are over 12,000 on flickr.com.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=equirectangular

Quote - From reading on your site, it looks like the HDRI probes won't work. Is that right? Or, is it that you'll notice they are "backwards" if there's something like a word or a clock in the image?

I pondered how to answer this for a day. I don't understand the question, and I'm wondering if that's what you really meant to ask.

There are several things conflated here. HDRI, probe, and "backwards" (mirrored) things.

HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Image. HDR images do work on the environment sphere and they do work as IBL light probes. However, the things we put on the environment sphere must be equirectangular images, and the things we use as IBL light probes are "angular map" images.

HDR has nothing to do with whether an image is laid out in an equirectangular map or an angular map. Apples and oranges.

Images to be used as Image Based Light "probes" should be in angular map format in order to make sense. That's not to say that images in other layouts don't "work", they just don't necessarily produce lighting that corresponds in any meaningful way with a real environment.

It is possible to convert between equirectangular mapping and angular mapping. However, the environment sphere is supposed to be detailed, so you can look at it, instead of just using it for lighting. The angular map format is designed for rapid use as a light source, not something to look at. Angular maps look sort of like the reflection of the world in a mirror ball. Note that the exact data recovered from a mirror ball is not the same as angular map format. Many of the light probes people use in Poser for IBL are actually direct photographs of a mirror ball, and these produce inaccurate lighting.

There is a program called HDRSHOP that can convert between all these formats, as well as do certain complicated manipulations of HDR images. You can manipulate low dynamic range (LDR) imges in HDRSHOP as well.

You can also convert an equirectangular mapped image to an angular mapped image using my GenIBL tool.

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