Majestic details plans to port the Q400 to MSFS, Q300 coming later as a native model

Promises made, promises kept. Majestic Software has published today a long-awaited status update about the team’s current and future projects, and there is relevant news for MSFS simmers!

The Majestic Dash-8 is an elusive masterpiece that MSFS simmers familiar with the product have been craving since the simulator launched in 2020. Majestic didn’t take long, at the time, to say that its popular regional airliner would come to Microsoft Flight Simulator once the SDK allowed, but we’ve been left in the dark until now in terms of what exactly is being planned and how long it would take to be done.

Today, Majestic shed some light on this and provided at least some tranquility to those who doubted the Q400 would ever come to MSFS. Majestic confirmed that the Q400 is indeed coming to MSFS… but it will be a port, not done from scratch for MSFS. This essentially means that the model will be “refurbished” for MSFS, so we’re likely to end up with visuals that don’t quite match the highest standards currently set in the platform.

Despite this, the Majestic Q400 should still be the extremely realistic and immersive aircraft it has been on older platforms. Majestic’s programmers are re-writing all the code for the aircraft’s systems and gauges, which is a slow process considering the complexity of this aircraft. Because of that, Majestic is unwilling to provide a timeline for the release, but at least we know it’s coming and can hope for more frequent updates from now on.

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Not from MSFS, but this is how the Q400 looks on the inside.

An exciting new announcement made today is related to the Q300. This shorter variant in the Dash-8 family will be done from scratch for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but only after the Q400 port is complete. “The same is to be said of the other variants such as the 100/200“, says Majestic.

This is obviously some exciting news for those who love the Dash-8 series and can also be seen as great news for everyone who enjoys a high-fidelity airliner. It doesn’t get much better than the Majestic Dash-8, that’s for sure, so we bet this launch will be another major milestone for the platform and a product others will look up to.

As said before, Majestic is refraining from providing development and release timelines at this moment. After all, it’s a small team of developers with full daytime jobs and work on flight simulation products in their spare time. So, it’s now time to patiently wait for further news from the team, but with a big smile on our faces knowing that something truly remarkable is surely coming.