Developer Vector Simulations revealed themselves on February 26 as a developer seeking to bring what appears to be a high fidelity 787 Dreamliner to Microsoft Flight Simulator. As one of the more requested airliner projects, there’s naturally quite a bit of interest and attention on the aircraft. We’ve got a new development update that extensively covers the entire project from its systems to sounds to release and post release plans. If all goes according to plan, the developer intends to launch it in 3-months so the wait isn’t all that long. Let’s have a look!
The latest on the Dreamliner
Coming out of seemingly nowhere several months ago, Vector Simulations has been quietly developing their 787 Dreamliner project and are reporting solid progress. They say that they are going to reach content complete status by next week with all content and functionality in place. They say that they expect to then turn to polishing and fine tuning the aircraft.
The developer says that they’ve taken a “schematic-level approach” to systems development and have focused quite a lot on the underlying systems and logic to the aircraft. That also includes features like replicating the Boeing style airport moving map, the Boeing built-in EFB, and various other features that are found in the aircraft. In-case you’re wondering, the EFB is based on the real one (using technical documentation) and that it will be supplemented by VPAD which is the developer’s tablet based EFB that we’ve seen in other aircraft projects.
The developer confirms that both GE Aerospace GEnx-1B and the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines are planned and that they are deeply simulated including their own flight modeling and individually tuned sound sets.
The developers go into further detail on the aircraft talking about the landing gear, cabin configurations (the cabin is based on a United Airlines 787-9 as a reference), art and model work including LOD details, animations and wingflex, sound, and testing.
Remarkably, the team say that they are three months away from launching the project to the public. Public beta testing, videos, and other content is planned to come sooner than later. The 787-9 is their first release but follow-up -8 and -10 variants are planned.
This does seem fairly quick for a big complex airliner project with veteran developers often taking years to work through similar scale projects. How long Vector has been working on this 787 is slightly unclear so this may well be reaching the finishing line after a quiet several year build-up. We’ll have to see how this all pans out but a high fidelity 787 has been asked for by the community for years so its arrival, if good, would be well received.
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