The Spherical map is most commonly used for Environment textures and IESAn IES light is the lighting information representing the real-world lighting values for specific light fixtures. For more information, visit http://www.ies.org/lighting/. light distributions. It performs latitude-longitude mapping for the U and V coordinates.
Figure 1: Spherical projection applied to a box, cylinder, and sphere
Figure 2 shows the Spherical projection applied to an OctaneRender® Checks texture.
Figure 2: The Spherical Projection node connected to a Checks texture's Projection input