3D Simulation of Advanced Air Mobility Vehicles in a Photorealistic Urban Environment

In recent years, the concepts of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) have risen rapidly. While the companies designing and manufacturing them focus on creating some of the marvellous aircraft in existence, the MIMS Lab has been exploring options to develop a custom simulator for UAM vehicles from different perspectives. This paper presents a proof-ofconcept application designed using Unreal Engine and Cesium plugin and assets collected and modified from various online databases to produce a photorealistic flight simulator focused on UAM flight and traffic. While the project is still in its infancy, this paper presents proof of concept for a possible scenario for UAM vehicles navigating in an urban setup such as the City of Toronto. Here, three modes of simulation are presented: a pre-programmed flight with a tunnel-inthe-sky corridor for Head-Up Display (HUD) visualization, a tower view perspective to monitor multiple UAM flights within the area, and a pilot-controlled Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL) flights between different helipads in Downtown Toronto. As the project progresses, the plans include implementing proper flight dynamic models for multiple recognized aircraft that fall under the UAM category and conducting a pilot study to obtain their perspectives, areas of improvement and results.