GitHub

Installation

using Pkg
Pkg.add("Flight")
Configuring Julia for Multithreading

During simulation, Flight.jl uses multithreading to concurrently handle the simulation loop, the built-in GUI and any attached I/O devices. Therefore, if you intend to use its interactive or I/O capabilities, you will need to start Julia with multiple threads enabled. You can find out how to do this in the manual. However, if you are using the Julia extension for VS Code, the easiest way is to add the following entry to your settings.json:

"julia.additionalArgs": [
    "--threads=auto",
],

This should work well for most CPUs and use cases. If you run into issues, you can set the number of threads manually to cover your specific needs.

Overview

Flight.jl offers a powerful and versatile framework for aircraft modeling, analysis and simulation. Its design fully leverages Julia's expressiveness, extensibility and performance.

It is organized in three distinct layers:

  • A lightweight, domain-agnostic engine for modeling and simulation of complex systems with hybrid dynamics (FlightCore).

  • A library of high-fidelity, reusable physics and engineering models (FlightLib).

  • A collection of specific aircraft implementations (FlightAircraft).

Key features:

  • Hierarchical Modeling: Enables building complex systems from simpler, reusable components, leveraging ComponentArrays.jl for clarity and convenience.

  • High Performance: Its core simulation loop is built on DifferentialEquations.jl and designed from the ground up to be allocation-free. This enables extremely fast headless execution and smooth performance on interactive runs.

  • Interactive GUI: Offers an extensible GUI based on CImGui.jl for live model inspection and manipulation.

  • External Visualization & I/O: Features out-of-the-box integration with X-Plane 12 for high-fidelity 3D visualization, joystick support via SDL2_jll, and a generic interface layer for custom I/O functionality.

  • Solid Physics Foundation: Includes built-in modules for attitude representation, geodesy, kinematics and rigid body dynamics, providing fast, accurate and ergonomic types and operations.

  • Pre-Built Aircraft Components: Comes with high-fidelity, efficient and customizable models for propellers, piston engines and landing gear.

  • Integrated Control Design Workflow: Provides general-purpose trimming and linearization functions. Seamlessly import linearized models into the ControlSystems.jl ecosystem for controller synthesis. Then, realize your design in a practical, discrete-time implementation, and validate it via nonlinear simulation.