Nowadays, engineers rely on simulation environments to get fast, accurate results to develop complex engineering systems. This paper presents a simulation platform that is useful for students to investigate quadcopter systems. Based on real-time simulation results, the performance of the quadcopter under self-tuning fuzzy PID controllers was compared and further investigated. ß 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 24:934-950, 2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae;