This study presents an imaging chain simulation based on the camera model under multi-resolution conditions. The structure and directional characteristics of ship target are analyzed under different scales and sampling systems. For a 100-m-long boat, the shape and directional characteristics are stable when the image spatial resolution is >12 m. When the spatial resolution is <12 m, as resolution decreases, identifying the target type and obtaining the target direction using single-frame information become difficult. Compared with single sampling, oversampling can improve the spatial resolution of the image; however, diffusion of the target edge becomes more evident, which degrades the extraction of the target shape characteristics. For a ship target with symmetrical structure, these two sampling systems can equally capture and determine a moving target’s direction.