Earth

The Earth in space

Since R2025a

Description

The Earth scene is a 3D environment of Earth in space with stars in the background. The scene is rendered with Unreal Engine^®.

Setup

To use this scene:

1. Add a Simulation 3D Scene Configuration block to your Simulink^® model.

2. In the Block Parameters dialog box, set the Scene source parameter to Default Scenes.

3. Set the enabled Scene name parameter to Earth.

Layout

The Earth is modeled as an ellipsoid with an equatorial radius of 6,378,137 meters and a flattening of 0.00335286. The origin is located at the center of the Earth, with the z-axis oriented vertically and aligned with the rotational axis of the Earth.

The Earth rotates at a rate of one full rotation per 86,400 seconds of simulation time (one day). The scene uses the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF). For more information on coordinate systems in the Aerospace Blockset™, see Fundamental Coordinate System Concepts.

For more information on modifying the scene parameters, see Modify Scene Parameters.

More About

Modify Scene Parameters

You can adjust the scene parameters using the Simulation 3D Message Set block. All scene parameter values should be of data type single.

To modify a scene parameter

1. Add the Simulation 3D Message Set block to your model.

2. In the block mask, set Signal name to the parameter you want to update, such as AmbientIntensity.

3. For the parameter being updated, wire the value into the WriteMsg input port of the block and set data type to single. If using a Constant block, you can do this by setting the Output data type parameter to single in the block mask.

Parameter Values

Parameter	Description	Default	Minimum	Maximum	Units
AmbientIntensity	Ambient light level of the empty space scene	0.7	0	10	N/A
InitialRotationAngle	Earth sidereal angle at the start of simulation	-90	N/A	N/A	Degrees
RotationRate	Earth rotations per day	1	N/A	N/A	Rotations/day
SunLightIntensity	Brightness of the Sun directional light	0	0	N/A	Lux
SunLightLocation	Coordinates of the Sun directional light	(0, -9E10, 0)	N/A	N/A	Meters
SunLightRotation	Roll, pitch and yaw angles for the Sun directional light	(0, 0, -90)	N/A	N/A	Degrees

Tips

• If you have the Aerospace Blockset Interface for Unreal Engine Projects support package, then you can modify this scene. In the Unreal Engine project file that comes with the support package, this scene is named Earth.

  For more details on customizing scenes, see Customize 3D Scenes for Aerospace Blockset Simulations.

Version History

Introduced in R2025a