We continue to get more questions about using usgscsm (Community Sensor Model environment) with ASP (Ames Stereo Pipeline) and ISIS3+ (Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers) for simulated data and instruments not currently supported under usgscsm/ISIS/ASP. See this thread for a brief introduction to this topic. BTW, there is ongoing work to lower the barrier of entry for this camera model environment (usgscsm) via apps like ASP and Python libraries like knoten.
From a recent email a great question was posed (paraphrased).
I am trying to bring simulated images of a planetary surface into Ames Stereo Pipeline to generate test DEMs to get a sense of how DEM quality varies based on the input lighting geometry.
While I don’t have any experience doing this myself, I was excited to hear that ASP already has some capabilities to help with simulated data. I believe with a little effort, one could bring their own data into ASP, following these tips from ASP developers.
ASP has the ability to create simulated orbital images and simulated CSM model state format with the sat_sim tool (https://stereopipeline.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tools/sat_sim.html). That is for both frame and pushbroom/linescan cameras.
There is a tool, cam_gen, that can create a simulated camera in CSM format given the longitude and latitude of image corners, focal length, etc. This assumes the image already exists. (See https://stereopipeline.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tools/cam_gen.html#pinhole-cameras, towards the end of the section).
Lastly, ASP also has the ability to create a camera given precise camera position and orientation in the world space, and also its focal length, optical center, and distortion. We have our own format for that (https://stereopipeline.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pinholemodels.html#pinholemodels), but then the cam_gen tool mentioned earlier can then convert our format to CSM.
Note. the current approaches do not use created/custom SPICE or the ALE library.