Ideas... approaches I fear pv may not be sharp enough, pixels maybe too heavy as needs to be decent size and I need a mapping equation, bumpmapping too shallow? five3D not sure I can curve text sperically. Anyway ideas needs to be created at runtime and I dont have a hugh amount of time to play.

displacement map?

Originally posted by: pyrogen displacement map?

++

Perhaps check out some of the QTVR engines out there (Andre Michelle's comes to mind).

I spent awhile reserching and felt a cube to sphere approach might work well, http://mathproofs.blogspot.com/2005/07/mapping-cube-to-sphere.html

Prob can be applied to a cube...

private function cubeToSphere( point:Number3D ):Number3D {

var x:      Number = point.x;
var y:      Number = point.y;
var z:      Number = point.z;

return new Number3D(
                        x*(Math.pow( (1 - y*y/2 - z*z/2 + y*y*z*z/3 ),0.5 )),
                        y*(Math.pow( (1 - x*x/2 - z*z/2 + y*y*x*x/3 ),0.5 )),
                        z*(Math.pow( (1 - y*y/2 - x*x/2 + y*y*x*x/3 ),0.5 ))
                    )

}

Just have to take some time to try it.

but will look at QTVR, thanks.