Quote -  A tangent on this: WHERE do you people get good sky images for that environment sphere? I've looked at so many "equirectangular images" that my eyes bleed - but I found NO proper sky images. The few ones I found were all so small that it left them horribly pixelated.

I highly recommend Phillippe Hurbain's site (www.philohome.com) that is linked to on BagginsBill's page that cspears mentioned a few postings ago.  Some of the best I've found so far.