A curated list of simulators, frameworks, tools, and resources for UAV simulation — enabling testing, training, and validation of drone systems in virtual environments.

• Flight Simulators
• Physics & Robotics Simulators
• AI & Reinforcement Learning Environments
• Digital Twins & Synthetic Environments
• Simulation Tooling & Integration
• Datasets & Synthetic Data
• Research & Resources

Simulators focused on UAV flight dynamics, pilot training, and mission testing.

• Microsoft AirSim — Open-source simulator for drones and autonomous vehicles with realistic physics and sensor models.
• JSBSim — Open-source flight dynamics model used in UAV and aircraft simulation.
• X-Plane — High-fidelity flight simulator with extensibility for UAV simulation.
• RealFlight — Commercial RC and UAV flight simulator for training and testing.
• FPV Freerider — Simulator for FPV drone flying and training.

General-purpose simulation environments used for UAV development and robotics.

• Gazebo — Open-source robotics simulator with physics engines and sensor support.
• Webots — Robot simulation platform with support for UAVs and sensors.
• PyBullet — Physics simulation for robotics, reinforcement learning, and UAV modeling.
• MuJoCo — Physics engine for simulating complex robotic systems.
• CoppeliaSim — Simulation platform for robotics and UAV systems.

Simulation environments for training UAV autonomy and intelligent systems.

• Gym-PyBullet-Drones — Reinforcement learning environment for quadcopters.
• AirSim RL Environments — RL environments built on AirSim.
• Flightmare — High-performance simulator for drone perception and control.
• gymfc — Reinforcement learning environment for flight control systems.
• RotorS — MAV simulation framework integrated with ROS and Gazebo.

Platforms for creating realistic environments and synthetic training data.

• NVIDIA Isaac Sim — GPU-accelerated robotics simulator with synthetic data generation.
• Unity Simulation — Platform for creating large-scale simulation environments.
• Unreal Engine — Real-time 3D engine used for high-fidelity UAV simulation.
• Omniverse — Platform for building digital twins and simulation pipelines.
• Cesium — 3D geospatial platform for real-world environment simulation.

Tools and middleware for connecting simulation environments with UAV systems.

• PX4 SITL — Software-in-the-loop simulation for PX4 autopilot.
• ArduPilot SITL — SITL environment for ArduPilot systems.
• MAVSDK — API for controlling UAVs in simulation and real-world environments.
• ROS — Robotics middleware for integrating simulation and control systems.
• MAVLink — Communication protocol for UAV systems and simulators.

Datasets and tools for generating or using simulation-based UAV data.

• AirSim Datasets — Synthetic datasets for vision and navigation tasks.
• VisDrone Dataset — Dataset for drone-based object detection and tracking.
• UAVDT — Dataset for UAV detection and tracking tasks.
• Sim4CV — Simulation environment for computer vision tasks.
• CARLA — Autonomous driving simulator adaptable for aerial and multi-agent environments.

Educational materials and research on UAV simulation and modeling.

• PX4 Documentation — Guides for simulation, SITL, and UAV development.
• ArduPilot Documentation — Documentation for UAV simulation and control systems.
• ETH Zurich UAV Research — Research on drone simulation, perception, and autonomy.
• NVIDIA Robotics Blog — Articles on simulation, AI, and robotics.
• Microsoft AirSim Papers — Research using AirSim for UAV systems.

• Awesome UAV Autonomy — Frameworks and tools for UAV autonomy.
• Awesome UAV & Drone AI — AI and ML resources for UAV systems.
• Awesome Flight Log Analysis — Tools for analyzing UAV flight logs.
• Awesome Robotics — General robotics frameworks and tools.

Contributions are welcome. Please ensure your submission fully follows the requirements outlined in CONTRIBUTING.md, including formatting, scope alignment, and category placement.

Pull requests that do not adhere to the contribution guidelines may be closed.