Real-time characterization of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 for integration into Hardware In the Loop architecture

The purpose of this paper is to describe a real time characterization of FS2004 by measuring the dynamic model rate and quantify its temporal stability. This is done to evaluate Flight Simulator 2004 for a potential integration into HIL (Hardware In the Loop architecture) architecture used in developing embedded systems on UAVs. After a general presentation of the simulator and the reasons which lead us to study it, we describe the experimental procedure based on the definition of real-time simulation and Monte Carlo Method. Experiments conducted in different configurations allowed to isolate parameters that have a decisive impact on the real-time performances of the simulator.