Majestic Dash-8 Q400 to be developed for MSFS, waiting for SDK improvements

Majestic’s representation of the Bombardier Dash-8 is a highly acclaimed, high-end trainer aircraft developed for FSX and P3D. It’s one of the most complete aircraft simulations available on a consumer-level platform, and is something a lot of people would love to see in the new Microsoft Flight Simulator.

We have some good news. We reached out to the Majestic Team to see if there were any plans to release their product for MSFS. What came back was somewhat positive. Oleksiy Frolov, from Majestic Software Support, stated that the team is “certainly thinking of adding MSFS as a platform for our Dash-8 addons”, but there’s a caveat. According to Oleksiy, “some important parts of the Microsoft FS2020 SDK (C++ gauges) are still missing”. Until the SDK is improved there won’t be a release of the incredible Dash-8 for MSFS. The team will announce when the conditions become present for the development to start in adapting the aircraft to the new sim.

While this raises hope that we will indeed see Majestic’s Dash-8 in MSFS one day, it also raises some questions about the current viability of having more complex addons released for MSFS. We already know that PMDG is working in bringing the 737NG to MSFS, with a pipeline of 6 to 12 months for the release. May be the case that some developers have a closer relationship with Microsoft and Asobo and are therefore given access to parts of the SDK not widely available yet? There’s no way to know for sure at this time, but we also know that Aerosoft has been working closely with Microsoft and Asobo to support the aircraft development and also the SDK, as stated by Aerosoft’s own Mathijs Kok at the company’s NextSim Event a few days ago.

Time will tell how things will pan out, but these are definitely very exciting times for the flight sim community, with many well loved developers jumping on board of the new release, with high hopes of highly detailed addons to be released in the not so distant future. Let’s just hope Microsoft and Asobo continue do develop the tools that will make this future possible!