Schematic overview of how PlatoSim generates a CCD image in the FPA. (a) Illustrative overview of the N-CAM FPA with the 4 CCDs. The blue axes indicate the focal plane with the central blue dot (in the middle of the 4 CCDs) represents the optical axis Z_FP pointing in the positive direction towards the reader. The green axes illustrate the origin for n_CCD = 4 as a reference and the readout register of each CCD is highlighted with a red bar. Each CCD is divided into an F and E side (with independent CCD and FEE gain appliances) with anti-parallel serial readout directions. For the F-CAM the location of the metallic shields of frame-transfer CCDs are highlighted as purple shaded rectangles. (b) Simulated 400 × 400 pixel subfield of the LOP south. The subfield location on n_CCD = 3 is displayed in panel a together with the corresponding parallel overscan and serial prescan region which is used by PlatoSim to reconstruct a proper smearing and bias map, respectively. (c) A so-called imagette showing a zoom-in on a target star from panel b. Indicated by the subpixel barycentres, the PIC target (green dot) has three significant fainter stellar contaminants (yellow dots scaled in size to the target star magnitude).