Debugging SITL with FlightGear

ArduCopter Copter Simulation
1

Hi all,

I have a SITL install setup and configured using Vagrant on my M4 Mac using the docs as described.

MavProxy and QGC (outside of the VM) connect fine and I can run and send commands into SITL (on the VM) as expected, but I cannot get FlightGear to listen/pickup the SITL output.

FlightGear is running outside of the VM on my Mac with QGC/MavProxy, SITL is launched with with --enable-fgview, port 5503 is port forwarded on the VM and fg_quad_view configured with --native-fdm=socket,in,30,,5503,udp.

FlightGear launches as expected but the quad just sits there during the mission, nothing happens, no logs, no messages about SITL etc.

Is there anyway to get some form of logging or debug statements out of SITL, once launched, all I see is this:

SIM_VEHICLE: Run ArduCopter
SIM_VEHICLE: "/vagrant/Tools/autotest/run_in_terminal_window.sh" "ArduCopter" "/vagrant/build/sitl/bin/arducopter" "--model" "+" "--speedup" "1" "--slave" "0" "--enable-fgview" "--defaults" "../Tools/autotest/default_params/copter.parm" "--sim-address=127.0.0.1" "-I0"
RiTW: Starting ArduCopter : /vagrant/build/sitl/bin/arducopter --model + --speedup 1 --slave 0 --enable-fgview --defaults ../Tools/autotest/default_params/copter.parm --sim-address=127.0.0.1 -I0
RiTW: Window access not found, logging to /tmp/ArduCopter.log
SIM_VEHICLE: Waiting for SITL to exit

sudo tcpdump -n -i eth0 udp port 5503 shows no data flowing out of the sim to FG

2

In the end I just couldn’t get it working with VirtualBox running the default installed NAT setup, so I manually deleted the port forwards in VB and reconfigured the SITL vagrant to use bridged networking.

Working Vagrant config for an ARM M4 Mac:

  config.vm.define "noble", primary: true do |noble|
    noble.vm.box = "bento/ubuntu-22.04"
    noble.vm.box_version = "202508.03.0"
    noble.vm.provision :shell, path: "Tools/vagrant/initvagrant.sh"
    noble.vm.network "public_network", bridge: "en1: Wi-Fi"
    noble.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
      vb.name = "ArduPilot (noble)"
    end
    noble.vm.boot_timeout = 1200
  end

fg_quad_view.sh modified to point to the Mac executable as there is no fgfs

Ardupilot launched with: vagrant ssh -c "sim_vehicle.py -j 2 -v ArduCopter -L EGWU --enable-fgview -A '--fg MAC_IP_ADDRESS_RUNNING_FG'"