It’s been another busy day at Flight Sim Expo. While Friday is the big day for announcements, there are lots of news items to report on from the expo through the other two days of the experience.

Recapping product announcements and briefings

In addition to the show floor (which I’m definitely missing out on this year by not being there), there are two stages running almost continuously with sessions throughout Saturday and Sunday. This recap will give you some of the key points that have been announced during the sessions and typically backed up by messages on various developers and companies websites or social media following their FSExpo presentation. If you want the full experience, you can register for access through the FSExpo website!

Miltech

A great update from Miltech coming in on some of their plans. There was a bit of a recap with a look at what was on their roadmap and what they are planning.

• U-2 (S glass cockpit and R analog cockpit variants) is scheduled for release in Q4.
• MH60 helicopter project is in partnership with Blackbird Simulations. They say feature creep happened and they now have the Series, Romeo, and Tango variants all part of the pack. Sounds are by Echo 19. Release is expected in July.
• Mission hub (something I’ve reported on before) was mentioned during the preview. They want to create mission experiences with their modules. They reminded us that its standalone from career mode and they plan to make this system interconnected with their other aircraft.
• We also have three unannounced projects revealed:
  • First reveal is Blackbird Simulations collaboration on an A1H Skyraider (Vietnam era)
  • Second aircraft is going to be revealed in September
  • A third project was teased earlier but is being done by a different developer and Miltech are going to let them have the spotlight for that

Before we leave this section, Miltech released (hours later) this great little MH60 trailer that you may be interested in watching.

X-Crafts

Marko from X-Crafts took the stage during the morning to brief everyone on the latest news from X-Crafts. A lot of the sharing there was informational for folks who maybe don’t know much about X-Crafts. If you’re a Stormbirds reader, however, you probably have seen several X-Crafts related articles recently as the company has been busy upgrading their E-Jets V2.0 line and have recently added the Lineage 1000 business jet (based on the E-Jet series).

One thing I did learn is that Marko has a community minded e-mail setup that provides a route a week for E-Jets flyers based on real world routing. Cool idea and a great way to get folks flying these aircraft! More info on that route a week program here.

Marko was excited to report that the ERJ Family 2.0 is progressing and pointed out that these aircraft are, unlike the E-Jets, quite a bit more manual so hands on flyers should love these. And of course, if you want the more automated airliner…E-Jets is where you can go!

One reveal today is news that the company is planning to deliver the E-Jets Freighter series. The E190F and E195F are both coming to X-Plane! No release date of course.

Meridian GMT

Back after the brief presentation yesterday, Meridian GMT had a bit more time to showcase their products today. This is the split off from the old Honeycomb team that have refactored and come together under a new name while the other part of Honeycomb continues on.

There are three in development hardware options right now:

• X-Ray Flight Controller – A gamepad style controller with flight sim specific controls on it.
• Sierra Plus Flight Controls – A yoke system with interchangable panels for different types of aircraft.
• Tango Plus Throttle Quadrant – A full featured quadrant with Throttle levers for Boeing, Airbus & General Aviation.

Check out the company’s website for more info.

Aerosoft and guest

There was a bit of mystery about the Aerosoft presentation this year and they very quickly revealed why. There were two product announcements from the company with both being MSFS focused.

First, the mystery guest was none other than one of the members of the ToLiss team – known for their high fidelity X-Plane airliners. ToLiss are partnering with Aerosoft to bring the A340 to Microsoft Flight Simulator (that’s two A340s revealed in two days!).

The A340 will be developed with an external systems and flight model so it will have quite a bit of commonality with the external systems that the company has developed with X-Plane as well. Instead of plugging into X-Plane, it’ll be plugged into MSFS instead. Aerosoft will be handling the art.

ToLiss were also quick to say that they aren’t abandoning X-Plane and infact they have just revealed doing an A320ceo for X-Plane and have plans after that one too. This is something they are doing on the side with Aerosoft still taking the lead.

There was a bit of a flub with the presentation but they were quickly recovering with the reveal of their A330neo project. Previously announced, this is the first time that we’ve seen it. Reportedly the code has been refactored from the A330ceo released previously (Ed note: That aircraft had a lot of problems on release and it has since had two patches…not sure what state its in now). This product doesn’t appear to be part of the ToLiss project so that is a separate endeavour.

No prices or release dates.

Other discussions

Let’s talk a little about some of the other discussions.

One of the sessions I watched was hosted by Brian Shellabarger from SayIntentions.AI about the future of flight simulation and AI. I was worried that it might be a little bit too optimistic about the challenges but it was a little more grounded on the challenges (especially CPU/GPU power needed) that are ahead. Still, there are some encouraging signs and the most recent advancements may help us with everything from virtual ATC to faster developer content generation.

Airland World gave a very interesting presentation about an open world project that they are working on where game developers can insert their flight sim projects into the open world. Its a very large concept to tackle but curious to see if any future products begin to use it.

A couple of interesting presentations on VATSIM. One was on dispelling myths and another that was more of a tutorial on how to make use of it and even a little bit of history behind it. The panel discussion was particularly interesting just because of the experience behind it with everyone being VATSIM controllers but many of them also having real world experience and being able to compare it.

Marko from X-Crafts was back on the stage in the afternoon to do a very different presentation about why flight sim businesses fail. Here we get a very useful summary of the challenges of doing development: hunting bugs, releasing to the community, why release dates are almost impossible to guess at when development is often non-linear, and how difficult it can be to sustain that effort over years. Marko should know as his company has been going since 2013.

The last presentations I watched was Flight Factor with Ramzzess giving a relatively interesting discussion about how they simulate engines on their 777 for X-Plane 12. It sounds like a niche discussion but it was actually quite interesting with the challenges of putting mathematical models together to simulate the engines of the aircraft. Interestingly, Rolls Royce engines using EPR instead of N1 for their engine system is apparently quite the headache.

There were so many more presentations and they are all recorded but these ones stood out and I hope this gives you a bit of a sense of what is available at the expo. I’ll be doing what is probably going to be a shorter summary tomorrow – we’ll see how it goes!