Friday, June 26, 2020

PREPAR3D V5 HOTFIX 2 COMPATIBILITY STATEMENT





Lockheed Martin has released P3Dv5 Hotfitx 2 a few days ago - hopefully it solves some of the stability/CTD issues that some of you told me about.
Apart from the stability issues, you may have noticed that some night effects (external lights, landing lights and VC illumination) are too bright and lights behave as "X-Rays". The excessive intesity is due to new parameters introduced in P3Dv5 (which only affect PBR materials), while the "x-ray" effect is unfortunately due to the graphic engine of the sim.
I'll try to find the time to update the effects on my older planes.
In terms of compatibility of my planes, nothing has changed...so here is the situation.


M-346 MASTER - Works fine, no issues to report.

F-35 LIGHTNING II - As previously noted, you need version 3.67 or above for it work fine with P3Dv5. Apart from that, and the excessive brightness of some effects at night, there are some minor issues with the voice alerts.

EUROFIGHTER TYPHOON - Works fine, except the excessive night lighting...which is particularly annoying since the landing lights illuminate the cockpit.

TA-4J SKYHAWK - Again, works fine except the excessive night lighting.

A-4E/F/G/H/I/K SKYHAWK - Same as above.

C-2 GREYHOUND / E-2 HAWKEYE - They should work fine, as they do not have PBR effects.

S-211/M-345 PROTOTYPE - They should work fine as there are no PBR effects in the cockpit.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

M-346 Master v1.00 Released


The M-346 is finally available on SimMarket for purchase! As usual I will try my best to keep it up to date and meet and possibly exceed customer expectations. Thanks to all the development team and testers - I am quite happy with the final product I hope you will like it!

The M-346 Master is available for purchase HERE

You have a look at the manual HERE
Aside, for a mistake in the final build, the Italian Air Force livery texture has some missing markings - this will be fixed in the first patch, but for the time being you can download the correct texture HERE - it goes into the texture.AMI61 folder.

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

PROJECTS ROADMAP UPDATE - JUNE 2020



As the M-346 is approaching the public release, I thought it was time to share my current plans.
This is basically what I have on my hard-disk...in no particular order. Completion of the projects will depend on a number of factors.

The general plan is as follows:

- Lead platform: for the time being, the lead platform is still Prepar3D V4.4 / v4.5 /v5.0. The lead platform may change in future. The general idea, however, is to pick the best platform for each project depending on where it will be possibile to create the best product.

- Microsoft Flight Simulator: the plan is to support the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, initially by converting the planes we thing are most fit for conversion and with proper quality.

- X-Plane 11. Still some work going on with XP-11...mostly conversion of existing projects.

- Other platforms: we are actively working on partnerships and cooperations.



F-35 LIGHTNING II - VERSION 4.00 for MSFS / P3Dv5

The general idea is to have a new baseline of the F-35 project, rebuilt to comply with MSFS standard.
At the moment, however, STOVL capabilities in MSFS are unclear… so the project is limited to the F-35A for the time being.
PROJECT STATUS: PRELIMINARY WORK


TA-4J FOR X-PLANE 11

The conversion is almost complete...it just needs some minor tweaks to the flight model and avionics before moving to the Beta stage.
PROJECT STATUS: ALPHA BUILD COMPLETE



MC.72 for MSFS / P3Dv5 (and XP-11 maybe?)

The Macchi Castoldi MC.72 is established the world speed record in 1934, and held it until 1939 and is still, to date, the fastest piston seaplane ever built. I thought it would be fun to have one in the sim.
PROJECT STATUS: PRELIMINARY 3D MODELING


F-14D SUPER TOMCAT REBUILD for MSFS/P3Dv5

The idea here would be to rebuild from scrathc my F-14D Tomcat. Given the high quality of the F-14B in DCS, the interest on this project may not be great. Still it is looking cool.
PROJECT STATUS: ON HOLD - PRELIMINARY 3D MODELING COMPLETE - NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES AT THE MOMENT.


BOEING T-X for MSFS/P3Dv5
I quite like this plane...but at the moment the infomation on the cockpit and the avionics is scarce. Waiting for more info.
PROJECT STATUS: ON HOLD - AWATING MORE INFORMATION


BOEING MQ-25 STINGRAY for MSFS/P3Dv5
This started as an experiment to make a naval drone. Looking good and seems a great complement to the F-35 in some scenarios.
PROJECT STATUS: 3D MODELING COMPLETE - NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES FOR THE MOMENT


BOEING T-45 GOSHAWK for MSFS/P3Dv5
I had started a remake of the Goshawk project… but there may be competing products in development...so no further progress has been done.
PROJECT STATUS: ON HOLD - POTENTIAL CANCELLATION


M-345 for MSFS/P3Dv5
There is now some information available on the new M-345 trainer...and it would be cool to transform the M-345 prototype in the M-345 production model.
PROJECT STATUS: ON HOLD - DOCUMENTATION REVIEW