equirectangular rendering for Blender Internal?

Question

Can such frames/videos be rendered in Blender Internal as well? If not, how indirectly?

EDIT: The below solution is great as long as you can write your own Python script and only render solid objects. When you need things like particles/hair, it won't work as those won't be reflected.

Answer 1

First create a sphere and in edit mode select the triangular fans on the poles of the sphere and inset to very small size using I button and delete the triangular fans leaving very small holes on the poles.

Then unwrap the sphere using follow active quads, position and scale the UVs to fit the UV/Image editor window. Once the sphere is unwrapped add a new texture with video resolution you want (1920x1080)

Then add a material to the sphere, enable Shadeless, Mirror and set Reflectivity to 1

Then scale the sphere to small size and position it where the camera should be and add Subsurf modifier with at least 2 subdivisions to reduce texture distortion.

Once all the steps are finished you can use the python script to bake the textures for each frame in a sequence.

Answer 2

I'm sure with a minor edit this script, combined with the above solution, will allow to render an equirectangular animation or frame in in Blender Internal:

import bpy

# remember current frame to switch back after the script is finished
current_frame = bpy.context.scene.frame_current

mesh = bpy.context.scene.objects.active.data

for i in range(bpy.context.scene.frame_start, bpy.context.scene.frame_end+1):
    # set current frame
    bpy.context.scene.frame_current = i

    # create an image which will store the baked data
    image = bpy.data.images.new(str(i)+'.png', bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_x, bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y, alpha = 0)
    image.file_format = 'PNG'
    image.filepath = "//"+str(i)+".png"

    #set the active image for each uv:
    for uvface in mesh.uv_textures.active.data:
        uvface.image = image

    # bake
    bpy.ops.object.bake(type='COMBINED')

    # resave image with baked data
    image.save()

    print ("Frame "+str(i)+" complete")

# switch back to the frame you were on before running this code
bpy.context.scene.frame_current = current_frame

Currently it gives this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\User\Desktop\internal.blend\Text", line 22, in <module>
  File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\modules\bpy\ops
.py", line 189, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Error: No active image found in material "Material.002" (0) for ob
ject "Sphere"

If someone can tell how to set the "active image" for a Material, then I think this script will run fine.