I am trying to make a simulation model in Xplane 11 or Realflight for an octaplane with 2 forward puller motors (so a total of 10 motors). I just wanted to know if ardupilot supports that. From @tridge’s comment last November, “The main limitation is that ArduPilot can only control 8 actuarors - so if you have an OctaQuad Quadplane which typically has at least 12 actuators then you can’t control all of them from ArduPilot.” Is this still the case or does ardupilot has support for ~12 actuators?
If not, it would be great if someone could guide me in the right direction to get the integration working.
Unfortunately this isn’t possible with either RealFlight or XPlane. ArduPilot can control up to 16 actuators, but the FlightAxis protocol that RealFlight uses to allow ArduPilot to control the simulation is limited to 8. In X-Plane things are worse, and you can’t have more than 4 rotors in a model.
At the moment I’d suggest your best option is to simulate 4 vertical rotors with 2 fwd motors. It won’t match your real aircraft, but it will be the closest you can get with either X-Plane or RealFlight.
Thanks @tridge. I will try modelling a quadplane with 2 forward motors if that’s the closest I can get with the real model. Also, is the dev team working on simulink integration? Do you think that would be a better way to simulate any kind of vehicle?
if you could share your ideas on how to go about it and where to start, that’d be great. Me and anyone else interested in this integration can start working towards the goal.