There is a lot of warping (the grid shape and area is smaller at the corners of the square than at the centres), but that is tolerable for my particular project.

Are you using the improved equation, to minimise warping?

Just tried this out. The linked article didn't have a side-by-side comparison of the naive approach (normalising each vertex) and their improved approach so I'll post a couple of screenshots so the improvement can be seen in case it's useful to anyone.

Here's the naive approach:

And here's the improved method:

So I'm quite happy with that result!

So I'm quite happy with that result!

Aye. It's a fairly subtle change, but it is a very big improvement in reducing distortion.

Have a look at this: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_landsp.htm
It describes creating a randomly shaped planet.

I have to try that one out sometime. What I have to wonder is with all the resizing of the slices, how does it take care of the problem of empty spaces that are exposed from resizing the slices.