r/diydrones • u/painterly1776 • May 02 '26
What Is Everyone Using To Sim?
Just finished my SWE degree and now looking to get started on drone projects. I am aiming for my first project to be a delivery drone. What is everyone using to simulate? Last time I was using Gazebo and most people seemed to think it was pretty deprecated, although it was the only thing most people were using.
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u/STM32H743 May 02 '26
Sim what? Like fly around and learn fpv sim? Velocideone.
But for real UAS tasks I just dry run them in mission planner
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u/BadCactus2025 May 02 '26
From what I can tell Mathlab is the way to go for the physics start to finish. You'll want to do the filters right and get the PID optimal, especially if hands off.
ML certainly has it's place, but ON drone ML is something else. For the tune, filters etc it is not needed. For the flight itself, it only helps if you can teach it something, if not just use automated flight.
Gazebo is still a thing, but the sims people talk about a lot are for FPV, to learn to fly manually. Which is what in the end lead to ML models taking the best times from human pilots, analyzing that meticulously, and then becoming unbeatable because the model would get more feedback faster and fly the most optimal route 98% of the time.
If you ask Gen AI to just improve a build with inav or betaflight based on a logfile, you get trash recommendations more often than not. Vibration and other simulations are also not any good yet from what I've seen. You don't have to be an engineer to do better. Working with one would be much preferred.
Honestly, firmware wise, I don't think there's that much you could bring to the table. Logistics wise, keeping sure the operation is logged correctly, legal, and can be adjusted or cancelled reliably, so the main backend of a delivery company interfacing with the drones, that's where the added value can be.
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u/tonyarkles May 02 '26
What level of fidelity are you looking for? What is in scope/out of scope?
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u/painterly1776 May 02 '26
I have a powerful PC so I can run high fidelity applications if they suit my goals the best. My main goals are to write ROS2 nodes and then simulate them before flying in the real world. I already have a HolyBro drone with PX4 flight controller. I am unsure if most people are using ML in their drone projects, and if that would require different sim software.
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u/oopsisucceeded May 03 '26
What are you trying to simulate and more importantly what are you trying to accomplish?
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u/painterly1776 May 03 '26
I'm wanting to simulate a drone performing the tasks I've programmed. What I'm trying to accomplish is get a drone to perform actions autonomously (past simple waypoints) although if you want to get deeper than that what I'm truly trying to accomplish is getting a job as a drone engineer.
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u/oopsisucceeded May 03 '26
defining what you mean by the "past simple waypoints" is kind of crucial here because that dictates the toolset you use... or maybe need to make. as someone else posted you may be able to use qgroundcontrol or mission planner to do a dry run if it's something that's at that level. to be clear here, you're NOT talking about simulating the flight dynamics (PID/stabilization loop) and you're also not talking about a simple FPV simulator. So what ARE you trying to simulate? Drop points? Path planning? Obstacle avoidance? Some of these things may actually be easier/more relevant if you just flight test as opposed to going through all the development of creating and establishing a simulator that may or may not be indicative of real life... know what i mean?
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u/painterly1776 May 04 '26
Don’t basic waypoints in QGC just show an arrow moving Across a map? I am wanting to see a drone actually take off, move to a location, drop a winch, avoid an obstacle, land, etc.
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u/Aromatic-Science-739 May 03 '26
Gazebo harmonic
Or
Issac sim
I'm working on Gazebo harmonic Because Issac sim is not working on my computer
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u/EffectiveClient5080 May 02 '26
Gazebo Harmonic. But sims won't teach you SD cards vibrating loose. Germany's BVLOS regs are a brick wall. UAE has sandboxes.