How to do stars?

[ssstratton]

Note: I've already posted a bit on this related to skybox - but a skybox has problems when you rotate it.

My problem is how to get stars displayed around the player. Obviously there are too many stars to realistically add all of them, so some sort of image mapping is likely.

Has anyone done this - got any ideas - pointers or whatever?

I've also given a little more detail of my application that may help below...

Cheers
 Andy Stratton
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My particular application (a space game) has some extra features that may make it easier to produce the stars:

1. Ships remain essentially on the horizontal - i.e they can move in x and z freely, but are limited in the y dimension (to a couple of hundred metres max).
2. Ships can rotate around the z axis only (though a little x and y rotation is likely to be added to make turning and climb/dive more look better). i.e. there is no significant rolling or pitching.

This means that the star sphere (as I previously called it) could just be a star cylinder and still work. The player shouldn't be able to see directly up or down.