DEVELOPMENT, INTEGRATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AIRCRAFT’S VIRTUAL MODEL IN MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR

Commercialized flight simulators are considered as a training tool for aircrafts, validated by pilots of real systems. The aerodynamic aspect of aircrafts existing on the libraries of these simulators is treated in a shallow way. For example, the MicroSoft Flight Simulator 2004 (MSFS 2004), which is used in this work, uses the file “aircraft.cfg” of the folder “Flight Simulator 9” to stock some values that will be multiplied by the aerodynamic coefficients derivatives that are considered unknown and vary in time. These aerodynamic coefficients are important in the evaluation of the aircraft performance and stability-control characteristics. These coefficients also can be used in the automatic flight control systems and mathematical model of flight simulator. The Microsoft Flight Simulator has APIs, developed by Microsoft and third party programmers, which allow integration of new “add-ons” and external software and hardware modules. In this paper, we propose to present the integration of an aircraft's (F-16) virtual model in the Microsoft Flight Simulator FS-2004, and the procedure of identifying its aerodynamic coefficients.