R/C DeskPilot: a free simulator for RC flying

I don't get much time anymore to fly my real R/C planes. Since the only stick time I get is when I fire up a simulator om my PC, I'm very happy with the release of R/C DeskPilot.

As long as I remember, there have been R/C airplane simulators around. There is the state-of-the-art Realflight simulator. Nice, but expensive. A somewhat more affordable sim is Phoenix, but at 130$ it is still pricey. There have been some cheaper commercial products available, but they always seemed to lack in either the flight modeling or the graphics department.



The unavailability of decent low-end products had led to the success of FMS, a free flight simulator developed by Roman & Michael Möller. Initially, it matched and even outperformed some of the cheaper commercial simulators. But then development slowed down and finally got abandoned. I guess the developers just lost interest.

We had to wait until now, 8 years after the last version of FMS was released, to get an alternative for FMS. I know that Davy, the developer of R/C DeskPilot, was thinking about this already for a long time and now finally released his creation to the public.

R/C Desk Pilot is everything FMS always wanted to be: Free, great graphics, decent flight model and fun options. I'm way to rusty as a pilot to provide a detailed review of this sim. But I have been running Realflight and R/C Desk Pilot back to back and I think they're actually on the same level.

There are of course some quirks that still need to be ironed out in the beta version: Ground handling is not realistic, it's like your riding on ice. Also, you can't crash when you're upside down, the plane just continues to circle on the ground, very funny. A more serious defect is the missing collision detection: you can't crash into trees or other objects. This also means that sometimes the tip of your wings can go into the ground when flying low.

On the other hand, there are some fantastic features. There is a very realistic wind simulator, with configurable strength and gusts. There is also thermal activity. The thermals can vary in size and strength and they are indicated nicely by rising bubbles of air. And the best of all is the built-in "pylon racing" game. It's fun and addictive and really trains your flying skills.

The overall quality of graphics is very good. The game uses DirectX 9 and can render beautiful scenery and skies on a decent graphics card. You can even see that the leaves in the trees move with the wind. The flight model is very realistic, especially with the glider model. Wingovers, stalls, high alpha maneuvers: it's all there. A more technical feature is that there is an API for input and output: You can write a program that reads out the movements of the airplane and then commands back to the plane what control surfaces should be moved. This is ideal for finetuning airframe parameters of developing an autopilot.

One thing FMS never had and what was probably the cause of it being abandoned is a business model. Manufacturers can advertise their airplanes in the game and even buy in-game advertising. This will ensure that the developer will keep up his efforts and the sim, together with the ecosystem around it, can continue to prosper.

The next step for R/C DeskPilot will probably be to allow others do develop scenery and airplanes for it. This might conflict with the chosen business model. But many more models can be explored. For example, R/C DeskPilot could run real time competitions and charge companies like Graupner to be allowed to provide the prices for the winners. Or users could be asked to pay a small fee to participate into a competition or even an online flight training class.

Great job done by Davy! You can comment on his work in the forums on RCGroups or RCPowers.