What we need, and what I-War and and the like seem to have, is full 360% backgrounds. I'm not sure if they're generated procedurals or what, but they work, and they're beautiful. None of this patchy **** the Freespace bitmaps have, there's just this consistent look all around, and it works.
I'm betting there's a way to add onto the starfield generator FS2 already has to create something basic like that- nothing so complex as EVE's, probably (after all, this is an amateur project and we're theoretically trying to keep it low-demand on the processor deal), but a step up from FS1's ass-looking ones and more consistent than FS2's bitmaps.
Of course, how would be the kicker. I have a vague idea of how nebuloid-looking procedurals work in 3D graphics software, but I don't think it'd apply here, and that stuff's generally a bit higher quality (and hence a bit more demanding on the processor) than would be needed for FS. If anybody's got a workable idea for how to implement that sort of thing, well...