Inside the FPV simulator from MVRSimulation

The US company MVRSimulation has developed a simulator for first person view (FPV) drones that is designed to help pilots gain and practice basic flight skills. Calibre Defence met with the company to learn more. 

“The best analogue to this is chaos theory – you have a lot of simple inputs – but when they all come together it becomes a very difficult scenario,” Garth Smith said as his team flew a virtual FPV drone around a simulated city in Syria.  

“It gives operators the chance to work with difficult to fly systems, as well as familiarise themselves with flight dynamics and targeting,” he added. At that point, the complex process of flying an FPV was demonstrated as the MVR team member landed the drone too quickly, losing control. 

The system can also be used to practice cooperation with other traditional systems like JTACS. “It’s a testbed to help militaries think through the integration of attack drones into their systems,” Smith explained, adding that six of the FPV simulator systems were delivered to a customer in December 2024. 

Integration into a wider force is a hot topic, the US Marine Corps has ordered a small number of FPVs from Neros and formed a drone attack team to test new tactics and procedures. Germany is following suit, albeit with larger strike drones like the OWE-V from Stark. However, this all comes with significant cost, whereas simulators can allow for some of the thinking to be done at a lower price point. 

“It’s a networked simulator that allows it to be connected to other systems, and we could have thousands operating on a local area network if you had the space,” Smith said. 

The simulator is the result of a partnership with Bihrle Applied Research, a company that specialises in flight models, “our first approach was to model it after competition drones seen in Ukraine. We started by replicating the FPV models seen in Ukraine so if you tried to land it, it would just detonate.” The flight dynamics are key to the simulator, and so performance of the drone is designed to simulate real world performance. To that end, they can simulate jamming by reducing the data rate, which in turn impacts the compression rate of the algorithm and the simulator shows the level of degradation. 

The view from the FPV crackled and started to blur as the MVR team replicated this effect, the drone soon flew into a building and was lost, leading it to respawn on a nearby building. The scenarios are built using MVR’s render graphics and are typically modelled on real world environments, they can be populated with red force vehicles including those from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian inventories. “Vehicles include damage metrics as well, so it might require several FPVs to defeat a tank for example,” Smith said. 

In its current form, the FPV simulator does not include a responsive adversary, being focused as it is on flight dynamics and integration. However, the company has designed the product so that it can be integrated with the Modern Air Combat Environment (MACE) simulator from Battlespace Simulations, which puts very advanced adversaries with different behaviours into the simulation.

The software is essentially the same as a computer game and can be operated from a desktop gaming computer, or through FPV goggles. It can also be controlled from handheld gaming consoles like a SteamDeck. The MVRSimulation team has also integrated a new optional MIL-STD ruggedized controller for the simulator, based on the Durabook Americas R8 Rugged Tablet and Multipurpose Portable Ground Control System (GCS). This enables operators to transfer what they learn and practice on the simulator over to the real world. 

Following the initial sales of the simulator last year, the company is continuing development and visiting trade shows to gather further user feedback on the simulator. “A lot of simulators are of variable quality and soldiers don’t want to put their time into them, but this is interesting to them and they enjoy working with it,” Smith closed by saying. 

Calibre comment

FPV pilots require some extensive training to become proficient in their operation and maintenance. A typical small drone will have a large degree of automation including the amount of power sent to each motor for instance, whereas an FPV pilot might have the ability to manually control those processes. The speed of the drones combined with their relatively limited range and flight time also places a premium on optimising flight paths and approaches. Using simulators can help operators get used to these processes before flying with actual FPVs, helping them understand the flight dynamics that keep an FPV in the air. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on 29th April, 2025.