This project establishes a connection between X-Plane and PX4 SITL (Software In The Loop) to simulate drone flight in the X-Plane environment. The goal is to provide a realistic simulation environment where PX4 can control a drone in the X-Plane simulator.

Check out our full setup guide and demonstration on YouTube to see the PX4 X-Plane Plugin in action!

All simulators, with the exception of Gazebo, communicate with PX4 using the Simulator MAVLink API. This API defines a set of MAVLink messages that provide sensor data from the simulated environment to PX4 and return motor and actuator values from the flight code that will be applied to the simulated vehicle.

The following table illustrates the message flow:

• Attitude Estimation: There seems to be a problem with abnormal attitudes and high-speed rapid rotation.
• Performance: It's crucial to run X-Plane at a high FPS since the PX4 EKF requires fast updating of sensor data.
• Yaw PID Tuning: The Quadricopter drone's yaw gain can be challenging to tune. It almost flies, but the performance in yaw is not very good. If you manage to tune it better, please share your gains.

follow the step-by-step instruction .

1. Download the Plugin:

   • Download the precompiled binary from the Releases page.

2. Plugin Installation:

   • After downloading, you should see a px4xplane folder containing a 64 folder that contains a .xpl file. This is the plugin file.
   • To install the plugin for a specific drone, copy the px4xplane folder to the plugins folder of the drone in your X-Plane installation. The path should look like this: X-Plane Installation Folder/Aircraft/Your Drone/Plugins.
   • If you want to install the plugin globally for all aircraft in X-Plane, copy the px4xplane folder to the global plugins folder. The path should look like this: X-Plane Installation Folder/Resources/Plugins.
   • Please note that installing the plugin globally will make it available for all aircraft, but it may not work correctly with all of them.

3. PX4 SITL Setup:

   • Clone and build PX4-Autopilot and the SITL Engine. Follow the instructions provided by PX4.
   • If cloning on WSL (or another system), change the hostname IP from localhost to where X-Plane is running:

     export PX4_SIM_HOSTNAME=XPLANE_SYSTEM_IP

4. Running PX4 SITL:

   • Run the default iris (or your custom airframe) with none_ to indicate that you'll connect your own simulator:

     make px4_sitl none_iris

5. X-Plane Connection:

   • Launch X-Plane and load your drone.
   • Navigate to plugin -> px4xplane -> Connect to SITL. The simulator should now be connected.
   • Under plugin -> px4xplane -> Show Settings, you can view live data and status.

6. Firewall Configuration:

   • Ensure that port 4560 TCP is not blocked by your firewall on both systems. If running on the same system, this is typically not an issue.

7. QGroundControl (QGC) Connection:

   • If running on the same system, QGC should auto-connect to the drone on X-Plane.
   • For WSL or another system, open QGroundControl, navigate to Application Settings -> Comm Links, and add a new connection to UDP port 18570. Click connect, and it should work.

8. Importing Parameters:

   • Tuning the PID for the quadricopter can be challenging. To assist with this, I have included a parameter file quadricopter_px4.params in the config folder. You can import these parameters using QGroundControl to get a good starting point for your tuning process.

9. Configuring Motor Mappings:

   • The plugin uses a config.ini file for motor mappings and airframe configuration. This file should be placed in the same directory as the .xpl file. You can customize the motor arrangement and select the airframe type (multirotor or fixed-wing) through this file. For detailed instructions, refer to the "Configuration and Motor Arrangement" section above. If you are using quadricopter and imported the quadricopter_px4.params everything is done for you no need to do any steps.

1. Repository Cloning:

   • Clone this repository to your local machine:

     git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/alireza787b/px4xplane.git

   • If you've already cloned the repository without the --recurse-submodules option, you can fetch the contents of the submodules with:

     git submodule init
     git submodule update

2. Building the Plugin:

   • Follow the instructions in the BUILDING.md file to build the plugin from source. (will be added)

The plugin now supports flexible motor arrangements and configuration changes through a config.ini file located alongside the .xpl file. This enhancement allows users to easily switch between different airframe types (note: fixed-wing configurations are currently not supported) and customize motor mappings without modifying the source code.

To customize the motor layout,instead of changing config.ini, I recommend using QGroundControl (QGC) to adjust the dynamic mixing. This can be done under Vehicle Settings -> Actuators. Arrange the motor positions and directions to match your X-Plane airframe. Remember, in X-Plane, the positive direction is back and right, whereas in PX4, the positive is forward and right. Consequently, the rotation direction (CW & CCW) might appear reversed between PX4 and X-Plane.

I recommend you use quadricopter air taxi model. It is basically a quad config but the graphics just show coaxial X8 Configuration. For users operating a quadricopter, a parameter file (quadricopter_px4.params) is provided in the config folder. This file pre-configures all necessary settings, simplifying the setup process for this specific airframe.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/76635-quadricopter-piloted/

As of November 2023, This project is currently under development.

Feel free to reach out to me in the issue section if you need help. Having experienced contributors is greatly appreciated!

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.