Sky Simulator for Ascom and Alpaca version 3.0.0 RC2 has been released

Sky Simulator for ASCOM and Alpaca is a software program designed to simulate an astronomical camera mounted on a computer-controlled telescope. The camera displays images of the night sky based on the telescope pointing-at position and is affected by exposure time and focuser position. The images can be created artificially or using the online deep sky survey.

It simulates also a guide camera. mount, focuser and camera rotator if required. You can also use your own mount in the simulation. Simulation of mount polar alignment errors and mount periodic errors is possible. 

Sky Simulator Features

• Simulation of an astro camera with live images
• Testing telescope centering using astrometric solving.
• Demonstration/testing of astro image capture programs, including sequences

This simulator is a useful tool for testing the focuser routine, astrometric solving, guiding and test run sequences. Star and a deep sky databases are included.

In it's latest release (3.0.0),  they have dropped the external Ascom COM camera and it uses now only the internal Camera. Both are accessible via Alpaca or Ascom COM.

Usage camera:

In the Ascom camera selector click on the Alpaca tab and enable discovery. Then you can access the Alpaca camera via the standard COM interface. Select in your imaging program "Camera Sky Simulator ALPACA (Alpaca) && Guide Camera Sky Simulator ALPACA (Alpaca)". Both camera are accessible as an Alpaca device or in Windows only as a COM service.