I've done this quite a while ago, when STARGATE and Artus (those guys) asked me for help. I've updated it, so it works with PB 4.61 final now. It contains a shader for normal maps, specular maps and a fake atmospherical scattering (just the glow effect). The clouds are moving independently from the earth rotation. The images are modified versions of the blue marble and blue marble next generation project found at NASA visible earth (details inside readme.txt).
Screenshot:

Download:
http://www.bradan.eu/files/OGREEarthmapping.zip
It also contains a sourcecode for generating the normal map out of the topology map.
For porting it to PB 5.0 you may need to remove the node-type parameter (the last one) in those two lines:
Code: Select all
AttachNodeObject(0, EntityID(0), #PB_Node_Entity)
AttachNodeObject(0, EntityID(1), #PB_Node_Entity)