Two Published Flight Dynamics Models Rewritten in Rust and Structures as an ECS

Open Access

Abstract

This thesis explores using the Entity-Component System (ECS) architecture to implement a Flight Dynamics Model (FDM) by re-implementing two published versions in the Rust programming language using the Specs Parallel ECS (SPECS) [1] for military simulation advancement. One FDM is based on Grant Palmers published textbook titled Physics for Game Programmers [2], and another is based on David Bourgs textbook titled Physics for Game Developers [3]. Furthermore, this thesis uses these models within an interactive flight simulator.The ECS architecture is based on the Data-Oriented Design (DOD) paradigm, where Components contain the data and the Systems implement the behavior which transforms data. The specific ECS selected for this research is the Rust-based SPECS framework. One goal of this research is to define the Components and the Systems of an ECS for the two FDMs and use them to build a flight simulator by creating additional Systems and Components to read keyboard inputs and send User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets to the FlightGear application for visualization [4].The ECS Systems used to calculate the equations of motion both for the Palmer-based and Bourg-based FDMs functionality were tested against the original code and were found to work as expected within a floating-point tolerance. A benchmark comparison between both FDMs determined that the Palmer model is faster on average than the Bourg model. Moreover, the re-implemented FDMs were successfully used to create interactive flight simulators using FlightGear for visualization.