Sharky--and anyone else interested in the Vue topic--I've had good success rendering skies for IBL use when I was working on my cloud project. Surprisingly they render faster in the 21__x12__ format (forgot the actual size but you'll see it in the format options. It has the wide angle look that you're accustomed to seeing in the Reality light tab, or the globe shape), but making them for HDR data is fairly straight forward. In a nutshell, you gather four to seven images of various exposures (dark to light) and compile them in your photo software of choice. I know PS and PSP have scripts built-in that even do the hard for work you, then save in exr or hdr format.

Conversely, HDRlabs has a free diddie to make smart IBL's with HDR data as well, and it works a treat! 

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