Thanks, all.

I tried bagginsbill's sphere and had to do some modification, but it works well.

I first scaled it down physically as it was huge and would take a huge image to get any detail at all on the texture map.  I made it a 700' diameter sphere.

Next I had to resize the equirectangular photos I had collected from flickr to get a good background image.

I put the sphere at origin, and put a bulb at origin, lighting only the shere.  I used a distant bulb oriented as the sun is in the image.  I didn't use a sun light, as I don't want to load a sky in my scene - the sky is on the sphere.

I then put a terrain through the sphere, replicated trees on the terrain and put a building at the origin.  I can pan all around and through the building and the background constantly changes, but stays realistic in detail and orientation.

Pretty cool.

Klebnor

Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device.  Beige horizontal case.  I don't display my unit.