Thursday, September 06, 2007

Orbiter vs. Reality

STS-118 Endeavour Docking Video Frame
Endeavour STS-118 dock in Orbiter

I was just looking at my Flickr pages and I happened to notice a pair of images I posted early in the STS-118 shuttle mission in August. I had captured a frame from NASA TV of an ISS camera view of the shuttle about to dock. I later ran a Shuttle Fleet docking scenario in Orbiter and tried to capture a similar screen shot, and both are shown here. I have to say it's a pretty good simulation - at small size, the images are strikingly similar. At larger sizes you notice differences in lighting and reflections, but it's still amazing to me what add-on developers and Orbiter's developer (Dr. Martin Schweiger) are able to achieve with this free software!

(I realize now I posted this pair of pictures before, but I'm still amazed, so I'm posting them again!)

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