Aerofly as a pure Image generator controlled via the external_dll function

1st Official Post

    Hello Aerofly Community,

    i was wondering if the current versions of Aerofly SDK do support to purely drive the aircraft dynamics via the external_dll.

    I have a highly detailed rotorcraft flight dynamic model outside of aerofly. Thus, i am seeking for the opportunity to use Aerofly to present the visuals only without using the internal physics. Interactive avionics components i would put aside and dont consider for the first step. So no dynamic components or displays in the cockpit.

    I have explored the SDK so far with the message to prescribe the aircraft orientation, speeds and positions. It seems to be very convinient, however, only very limited documentation and description of functional limitations are available. What i was wondering if there is a possibility to turn down the physical model of an aircraft within aerofly? In addition, getting some user experience on such type of usage.

    Looking forward to the exchange and discussions!

    Best regards

    • Official Post

    Hello and welcome to the forums,

    First, we would like to know if you aim to develop this for yourself, for the consumer flight sim users or for the professional flight simulation market.


    Together with Loft Dynamics (previously known as VRM Switzerland) we have already developed a highly realistic rotorcraft flight model for the R22 and H125 helicopters for professional use (pilot training). The underlying physics model can be used to simulate all kinds of other helicopters as well, it's just a matter of creating the correct rotor setup and to choose the correct parameters to fine-tune the model. So the Aerofly physics simulation itself is more than capable of simulating helicopters and I don't see a need to inject physics from the outside if you can already do it from inside the simulator.

    Currently it is not possible to inject physics states into Aerofly FS. The graphics representation uses the output of the physics thread computations, i.e. the rigidbody position and orientation, to orientate the geometries before rendering them with the graphics card. There is no method which would receive your own physics rigidbody information and output it to the graphics thread using the SDK.


    The SDK is intended for home cockpit builders and engineers who wish to test their own flight control algorithms for example and for third party add-on developers to develop applications that can read and send data to/from Aerofly FS. To my knowledge it is not yet possible to use just the rendering engine of Aerofly FS.

    Regards,

    Jan

    Thank you very much for the Feedback and first insights.

    Aim is to evaluate the software for the use in a professional environment.

    We are interested in an exchange directly with you from IPCAS. Please send me a private message if you are interested.

    Thank you and best regards