great job on the dog fight! and some of those cloud effects are superb. 

Thanks.  I think you're seeing the very nice Terra Sphere 1 by coflek-gnorg (I also have Terra sphere III which is a 360 cityscape).  Both are much easier than creating the surrounding "world" from scratch.:

http://renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=98766

 

thanks for that Link, it may come in handy, I always to forget to look around the shop here!

:)