If you haven't seen it before then you've never seen anything like it. At 15km across it might be the largest "semi-realistic" add-ons to Orbiter. The station orbits the Earth at about 550km up and at a fairly high inclination. Being so large the Big Wheel can be easily seen from the surface of the Earth, appearing about the size of the Moon. A Rondezvous witht he Big Wheel is easier than almost any other station since it is never out of your sight. This most recent version of the Big Wheel improves over the previous version by adding lighting effects to make approaches in the dark safer and less creepy.
The Addon is part of a larger series of Add-ons I have planned called "Earth 2120". Two other stations are included in this package. The 76 Fuel Service Station was the first add-on I ever produced and at the time I thought it was pretty big. This station is at around 750km up and inclined close to the Moon's inclination to make the 76 Station an ideal stopping off point on the way to the Moon.
The last station in the series is the Aurora Research Station. This station is an interesting station to visit as the inclination is set at 90 degrees, taking it over the poles. It is also very low in altitute at about 170km up. This station features an animated gravity habitat.
There is a scenario that uses the default Delta-gliders, the but DGIII is recommended, The package comes with three repaints of the DGIII.
Additionally There is a scenario that includes the Jumbo Firefly.
If you would like to use your Firefly at the special "Type III" docking system at the Big Wheel you simply need to add the following lines to the QJFF.cgf file:
BEGIN_DOCKLIST
0 -8.4 11.5 0 0 1 0 1 0 089
-0.014796 1.580479 45.587975 0 -1 0 0 0 1 098
END_DOCKLIST
This add-on requires the follow add-ons:
Venka's Spacecraft3 module (Required!):
http://users.swing.be/vinka/
The Delta Glider III (Optional):
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/
Jon Marcure's Jumbo Firefly 2006 (Optional):
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2360
If you are having problems with the main texture on the Big Wheel showing up you can download a smaller texture to replace it:
http://www.popamericana.com/Earth2120/downloads/bigwheel_small.dds
Just download that file, rename it to bigwheel.dds and put it in your Textures2 folder replacing the older, and larger, file.
Discussion can be found here:
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8012