Quote - Wrong meaning of map; a texture map for a skydome (or sphere)  is what is being referred to...

I beg to differ. Given the technical limits of the source material, to get a "good" and "realistic" skydome image map would still require a traditional "mapping" of the sky to generate the source imagery,

That information would be dependent on the time of year, and even the decade you were trying to represent.
A realistic star map from 1750 would be radically different from a 2013, if "realism" is your goal.

Then you would also have to account for only the visible light spectrum eliminating all the pretty nebulas and other stuff that most people associate with a "good" star map.

Now you need to add in atmospherics for the appropriate season, and location on Earth you are trying to "realistically" emulate a view from.

I could go on and on with technical details about making an accurate "realistic" star map in the first place.

The point was, what is "realistic" and "good" to the end user.

As some who has built scale solar systems in several 3D apps, and who wrestles with Lagrangian point mathematics in his sci-fi writing, I'm sure my definition of "realistic" is VASTLY more complicated than most peoples requirements.

If say… you just want to be able to point out a constellation, your relative amount of realism is probably much less.

I'm that guy who had no problem with Spock yelling "Khan" in the last Star Trek Movie, but was pissed that Praxis was already shattered, and it's orbit around Klingon was impossibly close. :-D

mo·nop·o·ly  [muh-nop-uh-lee]
noun, plural mo·nop·o·lies.
1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market,
or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices