Is Unreal engine proper for aircraft aerodynamic (airfoil) design?

Development Programming & Scripting
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I apologize for the simplicity of my question. I am a private pilot and an A&P and I have been working with software for analysis and design of aircraft wings, props, etc. for small aircraft. I do fly X-Plane but I do want to develop my own modifications for wing design.

I have been searching through the documentation for Unreal Engine but I have not been able to find the means by which aircraft models and their aerodynamic structures are designed. I am not as interested in the flight planning and things like that but I want to be able to modify aircraft structures like wings and props and simulate the effect on flight. Is this possible in Unreal Engine?

Thank You
Tom

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Not out of the box would be my take.

‘Physics’ in Unreal is largely hard-body physics: do things grossly bump into one another, like pool-balls or boats on the water. There is also some fracture (Chaos) and the ability to program soft-body stuff, but not natively so far as I am aware.

The water itself could be somewhat modeled but moreso for the visuals and general bouancy, for example: [Community Project] FREE Ocean Water Shader

Gasses, vortices, drag, etc are all particle-centric (naiver-stokes) so to DISPLAY the system, you could use Niagara, like for the water above. But, the behavior is something I feel you might need to program yourself.

So the answer is ‘yes’, but you will have to work to make it so.

Explore Niagara for Unreal, I’m not as-familiar with it’s capabilities as other systems but I know there is some workings into fluid-sims inside the system. Otherwise, since it’s something you could feed data-to from another algorithm you could still use Unreal/Niagara to at least display your model even if you have to build the model itself.

Don’t take just my word for it though, I’d solicit other opinions.

ref:

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Unreal physics is not made for accurate simulation (well it kind of is, but also it is not).

Goal of unreal physics (and any games) is to make physics that LOOKS real (not behaves accurate).

So you can use unreal fluids physics to make believable stream around wing.

However do not use results from it to create gameplay mechanics, it will have weird quirks errors and be generally unstable.

For some wing simulation you should use real formulas then use unreal physics for looking acceptable visual feedback.

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Yes, I am familiar with naiver-stokes’ and am working with machine learning tools such as Pytorch, Pygeo and Airfrans in order to simulate lift and drag, etc. However, these programs aid in the design but not in demonstrable simulation, which, as we all know, is what keep people’s attention.

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Agreed, so with the ability to use Niagara as the display-layer, either those tools can be used to export data from a sim and then you can configure Unreal to pick up on it, or you can develop a solution inside Unreal.

Given performance considerations, I’d look into data-channels: Niagara Data Channels | Unreal Engine 5.5 Documentation | Epic Developer Community

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