Flightsimulator part II

hasjime · February 22, 2026, 12:02pm

Some time ago I started to experiment with Godot and JSBsim to make a flight simulator.
After a longer pause I picked it up again. I think the results are pritty good for the little time I spent on doing this. To get it right out of the way, I’m using VSC and Github Copilot to do the coding part.
Currently I’m mainly focused on scenery, since it’s probably the biggest challenge to get a large scenery map with details that performs well. I’m mainly using a Mac Studio M4 Max with 40 GPU cores, 64 GB ram and 2 TB ssd. But I’ve also compiled and tied it on my gamer system on Windows 11 Pro with 128 GB (DDR3) and a 3090TI. The Mac currently performs better. But I’m sure that I can improve the Windows version as well.

The scenery data comes from swisstopo – wissen wohin
I started with Switzerland because I live here and it’s a relative small country. Better then trying to get all of the USA for example . Currently I have a 1m mesh for the near scenery and a 128m for the far scenery. From Swisstopo I could get all buildings, roads, railroads, rivers and lakes. Still missing are forests and specific trees and some special buildings.

The simulator has a slew mode and I can teleport to any airport in Switzerland.
The next steps will be to make some bespoke scenery to replace default buildings on airports/airfields.

Harrison_Sinclair · February 23, 2026, 5:48pm

super cool! congrats dude that’s awesome I’ve wanted to try making a flight sim

hasjime · February 23, 2026, 8:44pm

I have a basic setup in this project: GitHub - Q-coder/godotjsbsim: Godot C++ extension for JSBsim
Maybe that helps you get going. I might publish the current one I’m working on. The scenery data is too big to upload to github.com. So I first have to find a solution for that.

hasjime · February 24, 2026, 2:22pm

Yesterday, I added functionality to the virtual cockpit. I can now set the flaps, mixture, throttle and the magnetos switch from inside the airplane. I can also start and stop the engine.
Today I added the first bespoke building. It’s the hangar at my local airfield.
I had to cheat a bit with this one since the agent didn’t manage to make a propper BGL → glTF converter. I used this tool for convertion https://www.scenerydesign.org/modelconverterx/
Of course I have to ask the original creator in order to redistribute. But for my own use I guess it’s no problem. Actually, I think I should be able to import all my MSFS scenery like that
But the propper way would be to make an API like the MS and Laminar Research do and hope that some scenery and aircraft designer become interessted.