Environment mapping simulates an object reflecting its surroundings. In its simplest form, environment mapping gives rendered objects a chrome-like appearance.
Environment mapping assumes that an object's environment (that is, everything surrounding it) is infinitely distant from the object and, therefore, can be encoded in an omnidirectional image known as an environment map.
All recent GPUs support a type of texture known as a cube map. A cube map consists of not one, but six square texture images that fit together like the faces of a cube. Together, these six images form an omnidirectional image that we use to encode environment maps. Figure 7-1 shows an example of a cube map that captures an environment consisting of a cloudy sky and foggy mountainous terrain.
References:
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/CgTutorial/cg_tutorial_chapter07.html
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