Best Drone Simulators for Drone Pilot Training The following list of 5 best drone simulators has been selected based on current market search. We take into consideration many critical features of these UAV simulators which could benefit drone pilots while sharpening their drone flying skills by using these simulators.

Flying drones is fun, and once you are a skilled drone pilot, you can turn your hobby into a profession. But this requires hours of drone flight time before you can get the confidence to start your drone business. Furthermore, losing a thousand-dollar drone could have a devastating financial impact. In addition to that, most of the entry-level drones have an average flight time of around 20 minutes, and if you add the charging time of drone batteries, it will take a lot of time for you to get that experience. Drone simulators provide you an alternative way to sharpen your skills as a drone pilot efficiently and affordably. How Drone Simulator Works: Drone simulators are mostly an installable computer application which you can install on Windows or Mac operating system. Furthermore, drone simulators also come as a smartphone application for Android and other operating systems.

UAV simulators for PlayStation and Xbox are also available. However, these simulators vary significantly in quality and user experience.

Ideally, a simulator for drones should have the following desirable features: True Physical Dynamics of Drones: The simulator for any quadcopter should offer some realistic dynamic properties of the drones which it is trying to simulate. The drone pilot is flying on a simulator should experience the same feel and behavior while maneuvering the drone as it was a real drone. The quality of the simulated Environment for drones: Another critical factor for any drone simulator is the ability to provide a virtual environment which has a big enough area to fly the drone with some ordinarily present obstacles such as trees, buildings, water, mountains, industrial structures, etc. A good drone pilot experience hugely depends on the quality of the environment simulator offers.

The Ability of Drone Pilot to Change Flying Conditions: You can not get full advantage of a drone simulator if you are not able to vary the flight conditions. These conditions include wind speed, turbulence level, ability to change the drone payload, ability to choose day or night flight, replacing the models of drones, emulating controller failure and other emergency flight scenarios, etc. Some high-end drone simulators offer you more drone models and the ability to use their controllers in the simulated drone flight environment. Also, few drone simulators allow you to control the drone camera. How to choose a drone simulator It is essential that you select your drone simulator wisely.

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Some major drone companies have started offering their simulators. If you buy a DJI Phantom drone, you can use the simulator function of their app before flying the actual drone.

You just need to turn it on. Similarly, another drone company Parrot also offers its AR Drone Simulator, so give it a go before you fly the real drone. If the objective is to sharpen the drone flying skills in general, then you should choose a simulator which offers more prominent drone models and some of the simulator features mentioned above. Now we discuss few of the best drone simulators in the market and some of their functions. It would be difficult to cover everything so, I would highlight the key attributes only. Best Drone Simulators Following drone, simulators are in my opinion the best value for the money you have to spend on them. The list is arranged keeping in view the amount spent vs.

The benefit you get and customers reviews on Amazon and other websites. One thing you should note is that to get most out of these simulators, you should have a decent graphics card in your computer (which most of the modern machines do have!) and a RAM of 2GB would be fantastic.

This is just a note to let you remind that do have a look at the required specs before you buy. RealFlight Drone RC Flight Simulator with Interlink Elite controller This flight controller offers specific very cool features and in my opinion, is a complete package for anyone who wants to hone the drone piloting skills.

It has 15 drone models, a fantastic RealPhysics 3D environment, a sturdy Interlink Elite Controller (which comes with the simulator) and ability to change the flight parameters. The objects are reactive, so if you increase the wind, the light card boxes will move, etc. You can also fly in FPV mode if you want. With just USD 120 price tag, it is without a doubt on the top of our list of drone simulators. You should first look at the minimum requirement of the computer hardware and operating system before buying this.

For example, it is not compatible with Windows XP. Optimally you need a 2.4 GHz processor, but minimum 1 GHz is required. Optimal RAM is 2GB and minimum is 512 MB. Audio spotify 1.0.7.157 for mac download.

2.DroneSimPRo Drone Simulator It is another affordable drone simulator which would cost you just USD30. You can use this simulator with Xbox One, Xbox360, and PlayStation 3 controllers. The company says the support for transmitters such as Futaba, Spektrum, Turnigy, and others would be included soon. The drone simulator currently has the model of Phantom 2 Vision + drone. You are able to see the pilot and the drone view.

Other features include realistic lighting conditions and High-end 3D graphics for the environment of the drone. 3.Aerofly RC 7 Simulator It is a fantastic simulator which definitely would provide you a tremendous user experience. However, mostly it has plane and helicopter models, but you will find a multi-copter model as well. It is included in our list because of its realistic environment and quality. The map environments are very well designed. Some simulators only have a headless mode of operation, in which orientation of the drone is not essential, which is very easy to fly, but it is only suitable for beginners. With Aerofly RC 7, You would get an opportunity for real training because you would be flying a quadcopter with an orientation just like a real scenario.

Racing Drone Simulators (FPV simulators) Most of FPV drone simulators are cheap in price, and some are free. Mostly, you can use these simulators by using game controllers. You may also need to install any gaming application such as steam.

If you have installed steam on your computer, then you can ruse “FPV drone Simulators” and few “drone simulators games.” The games mostly focus on racing drones where you can fly drones in a competitive environment with first-person-view (FPV) which feels like you are sitting inside the drone. So, following are few of the FPV drone simulators. It is a First-Person View (FPV) game developed by LuGus Studios. In this, you see as if you are sitting in the cockpit of your drone. So, you install steam which is free download then you pay about 14USD for the LIFTOFF, and then you select various components of your drone using the desktop dashboard.

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You can change propeller, motors, battery, etc. And then when ready you can fry the drone in FPV mode using Futaba or some other transmitter (which you have to buy separately). It supports many controllers. You can not only customize your drone, but also, you can customize the racing tracks. It features realistic drone physics which is incredible. Recommended operating system is Windows 8 but Windows 7 is minimum.

Minimum processor speed for Intel is 2.4 GHz and for AMD 3 GHz or higher. Recommended is 8GB RAM and the minimum is 3GB. Graphics cards should be Geforce GTX 960M / Radeon HD 7750 or higher with 1GB video card memory.

It is a racing drone simulator by DRL (Drone Racing League). You would get a fantastic FPV experience using this FPV simulator, but for this, you would need a radio controller. On a side note though, I will write a separate article about best drone controllers later, so keep in touch.

In this simulator, you can hone your drone piloting skills in various ways in a competitive environment. You can compare your time of completion of a specific loop against other participants. It allows multi-player. The drone models can be customized, and the maps (environment) is quite realistic which you would enjoy. The drone simulator supports many controllers, such as Xbox, PS, FrSky, JR, Spektrum, Futaba and others. The operating system Windows 8 or higher is required with minimum 8GB RAM and 2.7 GHz processor.

The graphics card required is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (2GB) at the minimum. With a price tag of just USD 20, it is a no-brainer.