COTS and Design Pattern Based High Fidelity Flight Simulator Prototype System

Abstract

Flight simulator is among the most sophisticated software systems in existence. It is highly distributed, has rigorous timing requirements, and must be amenable to frequent updates to maintain high fidelity with the ever- changing vehicle and environment it is simulating. Current flight simulation framework and software developing pattern are complicated to use and time consuming. We have accomplished a flight simulator prototype system based on a new distributed real-time simulation framework and non-flight-certified Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions and have proved its fidelity and coordination characters as a flight training device. The distributed real- time simulation framework uses mediator design pattern as an information broker among flight simulation models of a sub-system which minimizes model interdependencies, improves the extendibility for the simulator and makes the maintenance easier. Meanwhile, the simulation models and executable code in the simulator were generated through COTS software and run on a PC cluster by which the difficulties of programming tasks are descend. The simulation modeling process and virtual prototype of the motion system are also expatiated. The validation methods and contrasting simulation results are presented finally to show the feasible design to carry out flight simulation with high quality.