Thanks for the detailed reply.
So, to clarify a bit with respect to your answer. This is only for visual effect and not for game or play-ability purposes. Again, just looking for some way to generate the displacement on the sphere from a height map/displacement map.
I was looking into Virtual Heightfield Mesh, and trying to understand if that would be a way to accomplish this. Although it is not that intuitive, it seems like it may be possible.
Is there any way to convert normal or height map data into mesh data?