Opus 5.5 vs Sonnet 5.5: two space-station docking animations
Opus 5.5 spent $5.21 and 42 minutes on a detailed station but a beige Earth; Sonnet 5.5 kept the blue planet for 92 cents in 11 minutes.
Look at the shadow under the shuttle up top. It falls right on the clouds. That is Claude Opus 5.5 at work: $5.21 and 42 minutes. Below, Claude Sonnet 5.5 built the same docking scene for 92 cents in 11 minutes. Almost 6x cheaper, almost 4x faster. Opus made the far better station: lit windows on the ring, solar cells, spokes, a real docking port. At 0:11 the shuttle locks in and green lights come on. But Earth became one huge beige hurricane, blue only at the edge. With that shadow, the station hangs a couple of kilometers over the clouds, not in orbit. Sonnet kept the planet blue, with clouds and a thin glowing atmosphere. Its ring just glows so hard that the station drowns in light. One got the station right. The other got the planet.