Starsphere/background

Anyone know what is require for making a starsphere. I've look at freelancer's cmps, but nothing. I can get a cube to work, but nothing like freelancer's kind. Always get a ctd. I made sure all the names and nodes are correct, but always get a ctd. The original fl backgrounds look so grainy, makes me want to jam my thumbs in my eyes lol. Any way using the cube/skybox way, they still seam lacking. Any way to improve texture quality? DDS is crap, but TGA's look way better but make file size huge. Is there a compromise? Anyone also know does fl support DDS DXT3 or DXT5? Anyway back to the starsphere, here's one I made via skybox style, came out ok, but files size was 25 MB for each starsphere lol:

YouTube

P.S. Yes my ships back then were laughable

Thanks for answering my questions. I can fix the border bug on a cube/skybox, but for something like fls cmps I get instant ctd when launching to space. When I get one together I'll post it and if you wouldn't mind taking a look, see if you can see what's wrong with it. This is the the kind of background I'm trying to recreate:

I'm fairly decent in photoshop for making the images, just can't get the model to work.

Something like this:

Genide in Game - Black Prophecy / Games / Desktop HD, iPhone, iPad Wallpapers