I can do it just fine, but here is what I'm wanting to do:

I want to use an equirectangular image as an environment to record in, rather than a rendered 3D environment. Is that even possible?
Whenever I try to use an equirectangular 360 image as a backdrop, and then go into 360 mode to record, it renders each cubeface as the entire image.
...Maybe if that image was tagged with 360 metadata? Would iClone even recognize it?

I suppose I could try it and see...

[EDIT] Okay I tried that, I injected 360 tags into the image and then tried to use it as a backdrop, same render results. It doesn't work.
The closest thing I have seen is to use an equirectangular image as the "sky", but that image is highly blurred, and there's no way that I have seen to make it clear, only to make it more blurry.
And then there's the problem of size output. Apparently iClone doesn't use full 360 format (1:2), and there's no way to achieve that in a video render, even if you select "custom" for the size.
So I have tried to get around this by saving as an image series, but when you have that many HUGE frames, file size gets crazy. ...And AVI files have a 4GB limit.

Again, I have created a Hi-res VR video and tested it on my rift. It works just fine. But the rendered environments are very cartoony, unrealistic, and not very interesting. I have also tried doing a composite where I make the 'sky' invisible and just capture the characters and props against a grey background, But I still have to stretch that image out, because of the file size format limitations. Plus I have to select the entire background, delete it, stretch the resulting transparent PNG to 1:2 ratio, and superimpose it onto the equirectangular image. If this is for a video, and I have 1800 frames, then I literally have to do all that 1,800 times. There has GOT to be a better way... even macros would be a pain for that, when direct MP4 rendering exists, if I can just get them to work the way I want them to.

ANY help at all would be greatly appreciated!