* Astronomy

New Release: ORBITER 2006 Edition
The latest version of this comprehensive freeware space flight simulator, has been announced.

Improved planetary surface rendering Planets can now be rendered at twice the resolution of the previous version. In low orbits and close to the surface, this provides a significant improvement in visual appearance. Other new features include "specular ripples" on ocean surfaces, and better coastline transitions.
Flight recorder and playback function Simulations can now be recorded and replayed. Together with the option of annotating recorded flights, this opens a new dimension for demonstrations and tutorials. Several annotated tutorial recordings are included.
Scenario editor A new editor module allows to create, edit and delete spacecraft in a running simulation. Creating scenarios is now much easier.

It was created as an educational project by Dr. Martin Schweiger of University College London.

Hardware and software requirements
# 600 MHz PC or better (Pentium, Athlon, etc.)
# 256MB RAM or more
# Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
# DirectX 7.0 or higher
# DirectX compatible 3D graphics accelerator card with at least 16MB of video RAM (32MB or more recommended) and DXT texture compression support.
# Approximately 120MB of free disk space for the minimum installation (additional high-resolution textures and addons will require more space).

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html