TFDi Design announces MD-11 for MSFS, a classic trijet for a modern simulator

The team at TFDi Design has revealed that their McDonnell Douglas MD-11, which has been in development for P3D for some time, is also coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator. The announcement took place during FlightSimExpo 2021, in San Diego, where it was revealed that both versions of the airplane (P3D and MSFS) will be available at launch.

A new airliner for Flight Simulator is always something to be excited about, especially knowing how few they are. TFDi has very high hopes for its project, which they say is being developed up to a quality standard that is “beyond study level“. Bold claims, although it’s unclear what that means. TDFi says they are about 50 to 60% through the development, with the FMC and various other systems already working inside MSFS.

To justify the “study level” claims, the MD-11 will come with the simulation of failures, abnormal procedures, circuit breakers, and other things that are not usually available in other similar products in the market. An example that was given was an instance where there’s a system overload, which leads to a popping circuit-breaker and a cascading of failures to the rest of the airplane. TFDi says that most of the MD-11’s code is actually being run from outside MSFS, therefore circumventing some of the existing MSFS SDK limitations.

The MD-11 will be available both in passenger and freighter versions. Most of the modeling work has been done and the developers are confident that this airplane will really come to life over the next 3-6 months as the team works on other things such as coding and animations. Don’t take this as an estimate for the release date though!

A product announcement wouldn’t be the same without some accompanying images. While TFDi didn’t release any screenshots of the aircraft in MSFS, they did show it briefly on the conference floor, happily running in the simulator. It’s still very much a work in progress, particularly when it comes to the flight deck. Thankfully, our friends at FSElite got access to a few images from the developers, which we are also sharing with you today.

The MD-11 joins a small but growing list of airliners in development for MSFS, which include the 737NG3 from PMDG, the Fenix A320, Just Flight’s F28 Fellowship, the Tupolev Tu-134, the Maddog MD-80, the Concorde, the ATR 42/72… and a few more. Make sure to regularly check our list of aircraft in development for MSFS and stay updated on what’s in the works from the talented developers of the flight sim community!