In the early 80's, Gene Miller and Christine Change went into the parking lot of MAGI, one of the major TRON CG vendors, and photographed a Christmas ornament.
They imagined the sphere as reflecting the interior of an infinite cube, which caused the sphere to be divided into 6 regions, one for each face of the cube. The far cube face is squashed into the yellow zone at the glancing angle outline of the sphere.
Notice how on other objects the analogous relationships are maintained: the upper plane (in blue here) is always on top. The right plane (in red here) is always on the right...
Classic '70's airbrush art chrome, as in this Sorayama 'sexy robot,' are actually reflecting warm earth and cool sky separated by a dark horizon.
...as is the chrome hubcap in the inset photo.
UPDATE 3/25/2010
Maxwell Render Gold test with roughness values of, 33, 66, and 99
