Ahhh. I see. Yep, here’s the problem, this statement right here - “ As discussed here, sphere maps are camera view-dependent and are not appropriate as we are using them.”.
In fact the spherical map is not camera angle dependent in its most simple use-case: applying spherical textures to spherical geometries. Why do I want to create 8 spheres with 8 materials to create an effect that I can achieve by mapping 1 texture onto a sphere? How about uses-cases with virtual globes where countries may have been a “map:” on a transparent Phong material? You guys didn’t leave a lot of options for realistic “glass” or “neon” - (aka. - bloom post processing). The one answer I found to glass you ripped out. Spherically mapping a texture onto a rectangle allows for some pretty cool glass effects on spherical models that were extremely simple compared to the custom shader version.
Just bummed. You mixed the simple
Use-case with the disappointments of the more complex use-case IMHO.
Or, did it go something like this? (Devs will probably laugh):
Dev: “It’s broken. Should we fix it?”
Approver: “Hmmm. Honestly nobody uses it and it’s not implemented the way it should be.”
Dev: “It’s broken in the previous build too. If we fix it we will have to push to all those builds as well.”
Approver: “Ya, let’s remove it.”
