Good question.
Plus Points
- Flight simulator software is a small cost compared to crashing youquadcoptererious aerial photography rig (assuming you have a PC or Mac already to run the simulator software)
- Choose a flight simulator with a real transmitter interface and you can practice the correct hand to control feel and eye hand coordination
- zero cost of crashes
- You can practice at night and in bad weather
- It's possible to practice RC style ground control flying and FPV (First Person View) flying depending upon the choice of software. Make sure you check because few do both.
- RC style simulators may have better, more detailed scenery and the ability to load different real world locations to fly in
Negative Points
- Without a real transmitter/controller you'll be pressing computer buttons or a game controller which is no use in learning to fly a real quadcopter
- It won't fly like the real thing - it's all in the tuning of flight parameter models in the simulator and in your transmitter/controller
- Most sims are designed for RC (remote control) flyers of all types of craft without FPV. If you want FPV the software has to model multiple viewpoints and that means a computer generated environment. So the location choice will be much more limited and less detailed as trade off for allowing FPV flight
So what flight simulators are available where they also have a quadcopter or multicopter aircraft model?
Three examples of Flight Sims for Quadcopter pilots
- Aerosim RC - This one supports RC quadcopter practice and FPV
- Phoenix
- Realflight
Finally I think that the ideal set up would provide you with a simulated quadcopter experience, using a real trainsmitter contoller for maximum real touch and feel, with a realistic (tunable) flight model. The icing on the top of the cake would be a quadcopter model for a small indoor practice quadcopter that you could use with the same transmitter/controller. More on that challenging search in a later post.
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