Hi all,
It’s been a busy year of development for us and we know many of you have been waiting on the big MD-11 update. We wanted to give a progress report and outline what to expect from us.
MD-11
Over the last year or so, the entire team has put in significant effort improving nearly every element of the aircraft. The sounds have been enhanced, the exterior model has been redone from scratch, the cabins have been majorly reworked, cockpit geometry and features have been improved, and hundreds of fixes, additions, and changes have occurred to the systems. Many of our testers have reported that it feels like a new product in the best way – we’ve also taken care to implement as many of the quality-of-life user requests as possible to bring it up to, or above, the standards of current top-tier products.
As you may or may not know, we recently sent out the Flight Simulator 2024-native version and the big art update out to our Collector’s Edition customers. These customers have opted in to test unfinished versions to help us polish and refine them prior to public release. While initial feedback has been very good, there are indeed some issues that popped up in wider testing that need to be addressed.
While we were initially targeting a release today, given the effort we’ve placed on ensuring this update is a good experience on day one for everyone, we’ve elected to hold the release until after the holidays. This affords us the time to continue ironing out the last few items and testing across a broad spectrum of computers and use-cases, ensuring it’s a smooth launch experience. We also want to make sure the team members that have been putting in long hours to get the MD-11 to where it is have time to relax and spend time with their friends and families over the holidays.
In the meantime, we look forward to continuing to work with our Collector’s Edition customers and quality assurance team to get it just right and we encourage you to join some of our official media partners as they showcase the upcoming update in their content.
smartCARS
While the aircraft team has been busy with the MD-11, the smartCARS team has also been working on an update. We’ve spent several months working with our partners and smartCARS testing team to refine the flight tracking and user experience and expect an update before the end of the year. These fixes include better X-Plane connectivity and tracking reliability, improved landing rate detection, and improved logging.
We do have plans for further features and enhancements, but similarly to the MD-11, our goal has shifted to stability, reliability, and user experience.
The Future
With the end of the MD-11 active development in sight and smartCARS approaching a more polished state, the door opens for the next projects to begin. We do have quite a few plans (with some already in motion), but that’s a discussion for next year.
We’ve recently welcomed some new faces to our support team and a returning face to our development team and it’s exciting to see the team grow and evolve. As always, we want to say thank you to our customers and followers for their support and patience. It’s been a very busy year and we expect next year will be an exciting one; if it wasn’t for all of you, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to work on the projects we love with the people we like working with.
From me, Fabio, Ozzy, Aaron, Cameron, Miguel, Pedro, Taylor, Thien, Giorgio, Josh, Martyn, Steve, Zac, our new members Chris, Jason, and Ricardo, our committed team of Community Moderators, and our irreplaceable Quality Assurance teams, we wish you a Merry Christmas, a fantastic holiday season, and a very happy New Year.
