A few days ago, SimWorks Studios were posting again on their Facebook page with some status updates on their products. One of the biggest releases coming imminently from them is the GA-8 Airvan. There are also updates and upgrades coming to their PC-12, the Kodiaks, and a few other notes. Let’s have a look!
Airvan at finish line
The biggest news is that the company’s next big project, the GA-8 Airvan, is nearly ready. The MSFS 2020 version is reportedly ready to go and that it will be released to the Marketplace first before later releasing on their website – they say there is a good reason for this and but can’t announce it yet. The MSFS 2024 version is functionally the same, however, they want to give it additional testing with the Sim Update 3 release (which is due any day now).
SimWorks Studios intends to release the product page, manual and failures supplement online sometime this week. A PDF version of the manual is also available here so you can get to studying it ahead of the launch.
I had the opportunity to preview the Airvan a couple of months back and I think this is going to be quite fun for those interested in small utility airplanes and back country airstrips.
PC-12 updates
SimWorks Studios PC-12 saw a bit of a rough start but it has matured into an impressive aircraft in its own right. The airplane is current undergoing a revamp with the interior getting special attention. A new seamless texture system and additional customization options are letting them to do custom interior visuals easily – see the above images for their FVA and Safari Wings.
Another feature they are working on is hot swapping avionics. The GNS, GTN and GTNXi will be hot swappable as soon as the Airvan’s new tablet is ported to the PC-12. Currently, the SWS PC-12 requires you to change the avionics via storefront or adjusted configuration files. Now it’ll be doable on the fly. Nice!
More levels of details and other optimizations will help with performance (which IMHO was already excellent!).
All of this is work being done ahead of a MSFS 2024 port. The aircraft is already compatible but this will further their efforts with the newer sim.
Kodiak updates
Finally, there was a brief mention of the company’s Kodiak 100 and 900. The Kodiak 100 has been in circulation for several years now and is currently being worked on to move it to MSFS 2024. Meanwhile, the Kodiak 900 is a new model that the developers are planning to bring to the sim. We haven’t seen any visual updates for a bit but it sounds like work is progressing well.
Stormbirds 
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