As time goes by and MSFS matures, bigger and more complex airplanes start showing up on the platform. Jet airliners, in particular, are highly sought after by virtual pilots, and thankfully we are getting increasing updates from developers about their projects in this category. We have the highly anticipated 737 from PMDG and A320 from Fenix Simulations, but also the Just Flight F28 Fellowship or the TFDi Design MD-11, but there are also some interesting freeware projects underway, like the Headwind A330neo that we featured earlier this week.
While we’ve seen some freeware undertakings go up in flames after the initial excitement crashed against the difficulties of developing such complex machines, others have been slowly coming to life and start showing some promise. Today, we’re introducing one of these projects, which recently got a development update with the first images of the aircraft in MSFS: the Digital Flight Dynamics Airbus A350.
You may have seen this project in our list of aircraft in development for MSFS, but details about it have been buried in the team’s Discord channel. Now, Digital Flight Dynamics (DFD) has a Twitter profile where they promise to let us know how things are going in a more accessible way.
DFD is looking to create a high-fidelity, freeware, open-sourced Airbus A350-1000XWB for MSFS. They’re building a custom 3D model of the aircraft and are promising a system’s simulation “close to real life for maximum immersion“. This A350 will also have an entirely custom cockpit.
Throughout the last few months, DFD has been sharing progress updates about the FMS coding and features, but also the ECAM and other avionics. To go along with that, the team has shown images of the textures and decals in the flight deck and even some previews of the avionics screens.
Development appears to be picking up the pace as the team is starting to publically share their progress although, at the same time, they decided to make their GitHub repository private for the time being, claiming that this will make working on the aircraft more efficient and easy.
As for the release, DFD says that this will happen once models & systems are complete, and when the aircraft is seamlessly usable with VATSIM. So, no clear indication of a launch date, but at least they don’t seem inclined to release a half-baked product.
Digital Flight Dynamics would like to get some additional help in the development, so if you’re an A350 pilot or engineer/mechanic, or just a developer, do contact them to offer your contribution to this project. You can use this form to submit your application.
To keep up with the development of the DFD A350, you can follow the recently launched Twitter profile or the official Discord channel. As usual, you can also count on us to bring you the latest meaningful updates, so stay tuned!
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that an early 3D model of the A350 was handed by BlueMesh to the Digital Flight Dynamics team. This was incorrect, and the article has since been updated to reflect that this is, in fact, a custom model originally built by DFD.
