A development update on the Ouroboros Embraer E-Jets for MSFS

Immediately after Microsoft Flight Simulator was released in August 2020, we started to see a surprising amount of developers getting together to create freeware airliner models for MSFS. Many of these projects were quick to hit a wall as creators realized that the modeling part was actually the easier one, and ended up abandoning those projects due to the lack of resources for the time-consuming task of making it all work.

Fortunately, some still survive today and continue to be developed, despite being clear that some early release predictions were a bit too ambitious. One of these projects is the Ouroboros Embraer E-Jets, which we initially featured back in May of last year, and which has since been progressing slowly, but surely.

After all these months, we figured it would be a good time to revisit this project and see how it was going. What we found was a still fairly regular communication schedule to those following the progress on Ouroboros’ Discord server. One thing is clear: the 3D model and the cockpit are now looking much better than they did 8 months ago!

Throughout these last few months, the E-Jets have been getting some significant cosmetic improvements. We’re talking about the E170 here, the first being developed, looking to pave the way for the E175, E190, and E195 variants later in the development cycle. Ouroboros said a few weeks ago that the 3D model for the cockpit was nearly complete, with decals for the entire cockpit already in place, almost ready for a forthcoming beta stage. It does look impressive and detailed, possibly the best freeware cockpit we’ve seen from an aircraft of this type in MSFS.

The latest development from Ouroboros arrived a few days ago, to let us know that the team will now focus on programming the systems and displays. The team has said before that the goal is not to create a “study-level” simulation of the E-Jets, but rather a fairly realistic and interactive experience where most of the switches and buttons work as intended. They hope to launch the first E-Jet at a similar level to Asobo’s default airplanes, but we’ll see, over the next few months, how this challenging work of building the actual brains of the aircraft will pan out, while further refinements are made in the visuals.

Ouroboros says that future development updates should provide more details about the PFD, EICAS, MFD, and MCDU functionality, as the developers working on each respective function will have exciting new things to share.

“What about a release date?“, you’re probably wondering. Well, Ouroboros is not ready yet to reveal that, because there’s still a lot of work to do and it would be unrealistic to set any expectations. However, they say an announcement is likely to be made once the aircraft is flying in MSFS. Considering that this month the team was able to do a proper cold start and shutdown procedure, we may have some good news over the coming months.

And this is where the Ouroboros E-Jets stand at this moment. Clearly with still a lot of work to do, but the team seems to be chugging along with dedication and no signs of giving up. Hopefully they will continue to make progress and end up releasing a compelling product. The E-Jets are a collection of very modern and fascinating machines, a nice departure from the ubiquitous Boeings and Airbuses of this would, and it would be a great joy to see them arrive in Microsoft Flight Simulator!

Curious about other exciting freeware big jets under development for MSFS? Check the Aero Dynamics KC-10 / DC-10, an upcoming high-fidelity simulation that is being created by real pilots and operators of the KC-10 tanker.