I wouldn't call SE a direct competitor to orbiter yet. Orbiter is focused on space flight mechanics while SE is focused on the universe/planetarium aspects. It's more of a competitor to Celestia imo. I do love SE though and actually helped create the default planet colorings for it.
No, if you traveled at 0.9999999999 c to Alpha Centauri it would take ~4.37 years from Earth's perspective. However, from your perspective, it would take just over two days.
Is the bitmap a 24 bit one? Others aren't supported as far as I remember. Also if you're making the planet textures with refection and/or night lights the images used must be the same size.
I know this is an older add-on now but the link is down and I'd much like to add it to orbiter again. I got a new PC this year and I cant find my backup for this add-on.
I have used chrome and have done two runs on each.
Windows 10 Pro 64bit
CPU Intel Core i7-4790k 4000 MHz
16Gb RAM
Dhrystone Benchmark, Version 2.1
Calibrating...
Primary run with nr=6122449...
Done.
Dhrystones per Second: 2045589.375209
Dhrystone score: 1164.251210
Dhrystone Benchmark...
Some more screwing around with planets. :) Also are gray-scales usable in the orbiter beta? Because it would be really neat to test these planets out in it.