How accurate is the solar system model in Orbiter?

[Zatnikitelman]

And you did have yourself in the correct location on Orbiter's Earth?

 

[Usquanigo]

And you did have yourself in the correct location on Orbiter's Earth?

I was in the correct time zone (meaning, I was in the Eastern time zone, lattitude was different, but I don't see how that would matter, especially when the moon was clear on the wrong side of the planet).

Regarding time selection, first thing I tried to do was calculate it, picking the proper date, then starting on the time, then I realized that it's all done from GMT, so as I was trying to figure out what that would be, I saw the Now button and hit that, then noticed that the time was roughly what I thought it would be, so it looked to me like it was the correct time (and date).

tblaxland, thanks for the heads up on what it was.

 

[James Cloninge]

No trajectory in space is a straight line, unless you are very far from any gravity source.

We don't call them "straight lines", just think of it as a degenerate conic with a very high hyperbolic excess speed. :lol:

---------- Post added at 03:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:53 AM ----------

Regarding such accuracy, tonight when I was taking the trash out, I noticed the moon, very bright in the sky, and slightly up and to the left of it was a VERY bright spot. I suspected it was a planet. So I got an idea, I loaded up Orbiter, selected KSC (I'm east coast US, so that's good enough), and selected the current date and time in the scenario editor.

The time was correct, and it was night out, but there was no moon. I zoomed out far enough to look around and it was on the other side of the planet...... Does anybody know why that would be? Is it possible to correcty (essentially calibrate it)?

Did you account for UTC bias? Or that the MJD .0 time starts at 12noon?

 

[Killer Toilet]

Question.

Would you say Orbiter is more or less accurate than Celestia? I know that Orbiter is real time while I believe Celestia is scripted, but what would you say is more accurate at the default level?

 

[tl8]

Both are the same, as both use the same system model.

 

[tblaxland]

Would you say Orbiter is more or less accurate than Celestia? I know that Orbiter is real time while I believe Celestia is scripted, but what would you say is more accurate at the default level?

Just restricting the argument to the solar system (that is the topic of this thread), I think that they are very similar (at least the new beta is with its new planetary precession model). Planetary positions are both determined the same way.

 

[garyw]

Did you account for UTC bias? Or that the MJD .0 time starts at 12noon?

in the utils directory is a very handy date.exe tool. Just work out what the time is in UTC at your location, plug it into date.exe and it spits out the MJD.