*3.1. Design of Virtual Quadcopter*

A real quadcopter and a virtual quadcopter are required to run a MR simulation. The real quadcopter performs within an airfield, and the virtual quadcopter interacts and follows the real quadcopter on the simulation platform. In this work, X-Plane is the simulation platform. X-Plane is a computer flight simulator software, produced by the Laminar Research Company of USA. In this study, an F450 spider quadcopter (see Figure 2) with a Pixhawk flight controller was made in house and used as the real quadcopter. The specifications of the F450 spider quadcopter are listed in Table 1. A virtual quadcopter with the parameters of the real quadcopter is needed to run the simulation platform in X-Plane. In this work, Plane Maker software (version 10.51) [32] was used to design a virtual quadcopter with the specifications of the F450 spider quadcopter.

**Figure 2.** F450 spider quadcopter.


**Table 1.** Specifications of the F450 spider quadcopter.

To make a virtual quadcopter in Plane Maker, we needed to design mainly five parts, i.e., the motors, propellers, fuselage, arms, and landing gears. Plane Maker consists of several sections which include fuselage, misc bodies, engine specs, landing gear, weight and balance, and visual texture regions. In this study, the fuselage section was used to design the fuselage of the quadcopter. The designed fuselage contained a central body part, rear tail portion, and camera holder, similar to a real quadcopter (F450 Spider). The arms of the quadcopter were designed using the "misc bodies" section. The section on "engine specs" was used to build the motors and propellers, using the real quadcopter's motor and propeller parameters including maximum turn rate; power set, pitch, root, and chord of the propeller; and propeller radius. We used the section on "landing gear" to design the four skid type landing gears similar to a real quadcopter. The total weight of the quadcopter was set the same as a real quadcopter using the "weight and balance" section. For more visibility in X-Plane, here, we used the color black (because the color of the real quadcopter was black) for the virtual quadcopter using the "visual texture regions" section. The fully designed virtual quadcopter in Plane Maker is shown in Figure 3. Note that it was essential to place the designed virtual quadcopter in the X-Plane's aircraft folder.

**Figure 3.** Fully designed virtual quadcopter.
