Марія Бровінська War 11 March 2026, 09:00

Ukrainians created a combat FPV drone simulator that was purchased 10,000 times on Steam. The team is now creating a new product for training drone operators

Ukrainian startup FPV Battleground has created a combat FPV drone simulator that has already sold over 10,000 times on Steam, with about half of the users coming from outside Ukraine. The game simulates real-world scenarios for using FPV drones on the battlefield: the operator must find a target, take into account the effects of electronic warfare, and execute an attack.

The simulator is available on Steam and the Epic Games Store. The civilian version costs $10, and the developers provide free keys for military users.

The project is also entering the international startup scene: the FPV Battleground team made it to the top 20 of Founders Battle at the TechChill technology conference, where they are presenting the product to investors.

How the idea came about

The idea to create a simulator appeared at the end of 2023. At that time, the team was working on several projects related to the hardware part of drones and simultaneously analyzing the market.

During their research, the developers came across a Russian FPV drone simulator on Steam. That’s when they realized that there was a demand for such products, but there was actually no Ukrainian simulator of this type.

«We saw the Russian game and realized that there was a demand for such products. But at that time there was no Ukrainian simulator available to civilian users,» says the project’s CTO Mykola Bulaenko.

After that, the team decided to create their own product. Development began in early 2024, and on November 29, 2024, the simulator was released in Early Access.

The game is developed and published by the Ukrainian company BAZU LLC. A small team of Ukrainian developers is working on FPV Battleground.

The startup’s CEO is rbzyby Serhiy Yurchenko, who has over 15 years of experience in IT and is responsible for partnerships, negotiations, and working with strategic clients. The technical part of the product is headed by Mykolay Bulaenko, a graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute who has been programming since the age of 14.

CPO Artem Savchenko is responsible for product development. The team also includes UX/UI designer, 3D artist Max Gorodetsky, and Unity developer Mykyta Gefsymansky.

How the simulator works

FPV Battleground is a combat simulator of FPV drones, in which the user controls a drone from a first-person perspective and performs combat missions.

Unlike most FPV simulators that focus on racing or performing stunts, Battleground simulates namely combat scenarios. The operator’s main task is to find the target and execute the attack.

Various types of objects are available in the simulator, including aerial targets, mobile vehicles, armored vehicles, and infantry.

Players can change the configuration of the drone — install various components that affect its characteristics. For example, the game takes into account the battery charge: if it runs out, the drone falls.

The flight interface also displays the OSD, the on-screen data that the FPV drone operator sees during flight.

Realistic flight physics

The simulator is based on the Unity game engine, but the team developed the flight model independently. According to CTO Mykola Bulaenko, ready-made solutions did not provide the necessary realism.

When the developers showed early versions to the military, they said that the drone behaved unnaturally. As a result, the team decided to completely rewrite the flight physics. During development, more than a thousand builds of the game were created, which were tested together with FPV pilots. The simulator simulates the conditions that operators face in real combat. In particular, the game takes into account the radio horizon, the impact of electronic warfare (EW), signal delays and even complete loss of video.

In some scenarios, the operator is forced to complete the attack almost blindly. According to the developers, this is not uncommon in real combat conditions: in many videos from the front, the drone flies for the last tens of meters without a video signal, and the pilot navigates intuitively.

Maps are created based on real terrain

Another feature of the simulator is the scale of the maps. In most similar games, the player is immediately next to the target. In FPV Battleground, the operator starts from the base and has to fly to the object independently.

The size of the maps in the game is approximately 12×12 km, and the terrain is created based on real geographical elevation data.

This makes the scenarios closer to the conditions of real combat use of drones.

Sales and users

According to Artem Savchenko, the simulator has sold over 10,000 times on Steam to date. FPV Battleground is available through two major digital distribution platforms — Steam and Epic Games Store .

The game was released in Early Access format at the end of November 2024. The civilian version costs about $10, and the team provides free access keys for the military.

About 50% of users are located outside Ukraine. Among the foreign audience, the largest number of players are from the USA, as well as from the Middle East and Africa.

Development plans

The team is already working on new updates to the simulator. The immediate plans include adding new missions, improving game stability, and updating graphics.

In addition, the developers are creating a new product based on FPV Battleground together with one of the large FPV schools, which should be used to train drone operators.

In the long term, the team plans to develop an entire line of products for training drone operators.

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