Hi, new user here, and very impressed so far. Just to reiterate what I think you have already figured out, HDR and HDRi are not the same thing. An HDRi is a 32-bit per channel spherical panorama that can be used for lighting 3D scenes.
Irregardless of whether the output is 8 or 32 bit, probably the easiest way to implement panoramic output is to just drop in nVidia Ansel support.