"If quarter faces does do a radial subdivision then I can eliminate the clipping by limiting the pitching of the camera and tweaking camera focus/zoom. " you're true,that's why I asked what camera you were using... but I don't pretend this will work perfectly for every situations (a frustum clipping is a frustum clipping !).
Any chance to see the work you've done on hacking. (I told you, I'm not confident with lite, but I can help ) ;-)
