A newly developed open-source software package promises to make advanced spacecraft camera modelling accessible to a much wider research community. The tool, known as SIMply, can replicate how light interacts with lenses, sensors, and surfaces to predict the performance of imaging systems in space before they are built.

Created by Dr George Brydon of the University of Glasgow, SIMply is available as a free download from GitHub. It employs ray-tracing and physical modelling techniques to simulate everything from sensor noise to lens projections, including pinhole, fisheye, and panoramic systems. The software aims to provide universities, small companies, and individual researchers with capabilities that were once restricted to large corporations with proprietary tools.

To validate SIMply,

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