The Fitting Simulator can be used to experiment with a ship fitting, without having to be in possession of the ship or the modules. It works exactly the same as the normal fitting window in every regard. Simulated fittings can also be saved to be used later, when the required hardware has been acquired and the necessary skills have been trained.
The simulator mode of the fitting window can be entered either by clicking the mode switch button in the upper right corner of the window, or by dragging and dropping a ship hull or module from the market or the fitting browser (opened with the wrench icon on the left side of the fitting window) into the fitting window. When in Simulator mode, the ship preview of the fitting window will show a ghost version of the ship being simulated.
Depending on the chosen setting, the color highlight of each module either indicate its status, which will feed into the calculation of the detailed statistics, or whether the pilot is still lacking skills to use the module in question.
This display mode for the modules can be changed by clicking the respective buttons below the fitting name in the upper left corner of the fitting window.