Fly it
Before you spend money on parts or hours on a print, you can watch the drone you designed actually fly. Fly it launches your current build in a real-physics simulator, so the numbers on the spec sheet turn into a flight you can see.
The physics come from your parts, the real motor thrust, prop, all-up weight, and battery of the build in front of you. A heavy build climbs slower and drains the pack faster; a punchy one leaps off the pad. It’s not a canned animation.
Launch a flight
Have a build
Design a drone in chat first. Fly it flies whatever is currently on your canvas, so get the build to a state you’re happy with.
Hit “Fly it”
In the top menu bar, click Fly it (the rocket). The simulator opens in a new tab and the drone takes off on its own.
Watch it fly
The drone flies a short scripted round on autopilot, spool up, a straight climb to altitude, a figure-8 loop, then a return and landing. You don’t pilot it; you watch how this build behaves.
What you’re watching
The flight is auto-flown, so you can just read the telemetry. The heads-up display shows live speed, altitude, battery, and wind. When the drone lands, a summary card freezes the final numbers for the run:
| Stat | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Top speed | How fast this build got, in km/h |
| Max altitude | The highest point of the climb |
| Distance | Ground covered over the flight |
| Flight time | How long it stayed up |
| Battery used | How much of the pack the round cost |
The scenery changes between flights, alpine, desert, or coastal, and there’s always some wind, so a build that fights a breeze looks different from one that shrugs it off.
Controls
There’s nothing to pilot, but two keys help while you watch:
- Space — pause and resume the flight.
- R — restart the run from the pad.
- Back — leave the simulator and return to your build with everything intact.
Share a flight
Every flight is encoded into its own link, no account, no backend, nothing to install. Send someone the link and they open the exact drone you designed and watch it fly, straight in the browser.
The link (/sim#…) carries the whole build and the flight inside it. It’s the
easiest way to show a teammate or a customer what a design does, they don’t need
DRONA, a login, or the parts in hand.
Why it matters
A validated spec sheet tells you a build should work. Flying it is the check before you commit: you see the climb, the speed, and what the battery actually costs on a real round. Fly it, tweak the design in chat, and fly it again, then move on to ordering the parts once it flies the way you want.