Catching up with IndiaFoxtEcho

Aircraft developer for DCS World and Microsoft Flight Simulator, IndiaFoxtEcho, has been busy lately with plenty of updates across their product lines with new information releasing as recently as yesterday. Let’s have a look and see what they are up to!

MB-339 for DCS World progresses!

A new update yesterday shows off the latest work on the DCS: MB-339. This Italian jet trainer is also combat capable and started out as a popular mod before making the jump to full module. The latest screenshots show off both the exterior and interior of the module and show the aircraft making full use of its weapon systems as well.

There’s also an image released that uses the real world manual as a kind of status update. IndiaFoxtEcho report that their progress is behind schedule but that they are making progress. The screenshots and below overview definitely support that and a lot of systems are clearly already in a good state.

Over a moth ago, they also released new screenshots showing off the MB-339 with weapons that are in the process of being integrated together with Eagle Dynamics. ED has taken over all weapons implementation now so this will be a key component of the partnership in bringing the type’s unique weapons array to the sim.

DCS G.91 cold war jet teased

A new teaser from the dev team shows the shadow of what appears to be a Fiat G.91 jet fighter. The aircraft was part of an early NATO project to create a common lightweight strike fighter and the G.91 emerged the winner. It went on to see a long service life with the West German Luftwaffe, the Portuguese Air Force and of course with the Italian Air Force.

The jet would certainly add flavour to the slowly growing Cold War aircraft set in DCS World.

LongEZ 1.18 released

There’s a new patch for the Long-EZ for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This Burt Rutan designed GA aircraft comes with a unique canard implementation, one that the new Microsoft Flight Simulator did not support early on but which has now received support for (no doubt IndiaFoxtEcho helped to drive that with this product).

As MSFS improves, IndiaFoxtEcho has redone a lot of their work to improve the dynamics of this aircraft and patch 1.18 seems focused on that. Here’s the change log:

Version 1.18 – Dynamics and Autopilot update
May 29th 2021
– Redone aircraft dynamics for increased stability (aircraft should now be easier to control and less prone to departures in severe weather)
– Tweaked wheels dynamics while on the ground (lateral control during takeoff run should now be easier)
– Added basic autopilot with following functionalities:
– Altitude selection and altitude hold (without baro setting)
– Wing leveller
– Heading hold
– GPS Navigation
– Redone Mouse Areas assignation with “Behavior” method, restoring drag functionality for several controls
– Revised Mouse Areas zones for more accurate control and fewer conflicts.

A new partnership

Another big update for the company is their new partnership with DIMEAS which will help them on aerodynamics research and creating better dynamics for their aircraft in multiple sims. Here’s part of their statement.

In a growing effort to establish partnerships and cooperations, we are excited to announce that, in the past few months, we have started working with DIMEAS – Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Aerospaziale of Politecnico di Torino.

The update comes with a link to their YouTube channel showing off a aerodynamic flow graphic of the M346 which they are working on for Flight Simulator.

F-35 project status update

IndiaFoxtEcho are recreating their P3D F-35 and bringing it to Microsoft Flight Simulator. They have indicated in their latest update that the F-35 project is having large parts of it being recreated from scratch with new graphics and display panels to better match the real world version.

The external model is being extensively updated and new 8K resolution textures are being worked on. They are rewriting the display code although they say that the LUA system that they are using is somewhat less ideal for performance than the C++ code that they used with P3D. They also warn that some systems will not be simulated such as the FLIR and DAS systems and the F-35 will have no weapons as those are not allowed on the Marketplace.

Not having DAS (electro-optical distributed aperture system) is not too surprising as the feature is highly classified and is part of the F-35’s capabilities that is perhaps most revolutionary. Also, locating enemy tank fire, detecting a missile launch, or providing 360 visibility are less relevant for a civil aviation sim.

Here are some beautiful screenshots to show off their work.

Su-31 for MSFS progressing

Another aircraft coming from the team is the Su-31 aerobatic aircraft from Sukhoi. The project is reportedly going well with the exterior model now at 99.9% complete. The project is awaiting the sound package and the flight model. IndiaFoxtEcho reports that they were waiting on the flight dynamics updates from Asobo in the recently released Sim Update 4 before finalizing their work. Surely that is now happening.

All of this and more

For the latest updates, be sure to follow IndiaFoxtEcho on Facebook. This developer certainly has some exciting projects in the works and a lot of cool content yet to come.