For the first few months of its life, the iniBuilds L-1011 TriStar came with a catch: you could only buy it through the Microsoft Flight Simulator in-game Marketplace. That changes today! The aircraft is available to purchase directly from the iniBuilds Store, and alongside the store release the team has pushed out version 1.0.8, a fairly meaty update centred on navigation and autopilot behaviour.
To mark the launch, iniBuilds is running 15% off for one week only, and the team describes it as a strictly limited introductory offer, with no plans to discount the aircraft again for the foreseeable future. If you already own the TriStar on the Marketplace, you don’t need to buy it twice. iniBuilds has set up an order transfer form that grants access to the product through the iniManager, so you can move your existing purchase across and pick up updates directly from there.
A new INS that flies the curve
The centrepiece of v1.0.8 is a rework of how the TriStar’s inertial navigation system tracks a route.
Here’s the short version of what changed. Previously, the aircraft calculated a fixed bearing at the start of each leg and held it, rather than continuously working out where it sat along the great-circle route. iniBuilds says the result was navigation that was accurate enough in practice but could fly slightly longer distances and drift a little off track on extended legs.
The new logic recalculates the aircraft’s track from its current position along the great-circle path throughout the leg, so the commanded bearing updates naturally as the flight progresses, which is how a real INS behaves. According to the developer, this brings routing, fuel predictions and overall navigation much closer to what SimBrief, Navigraph and real-world flight planning expect.
One heads-up worth passing on to anyone who watches their flights on a 2D map. iniBuilds notes that in tools like Volanta, the aircraft will no longer sit exactly on the straight line drawn between waypoints on very long legs. That’s expected. Those maps draw straight-line projections, whereas the TriStar now follows the shortest great-circle path across the Earth, which shows up as a curve on a flat map. So if the trace looks slightly bowed on your next transatlantic sector, that’s the point.
The rest of the systems work supports the same theme. The Performance Management System now loads the correct page for the active phase of flight, its active mode annunciations work as intended, and cross-track error, drift logic and CDI behaviour have all been tightened up for flights with track offsets. On the autopilot side, iniBuilds has addressed a case where the selected vertical speed would incorrectly jump to the aircraft’s current vertical speed on engagement, improved bank angle and turn-rate consistency, and corrected INS tracking cases where the aircraft could follow an offset path.
The bigger reveal: an Operations Pack that turns the TriStar into a tanker
The update is the headline for today, but the more forward-looking news sits at the bottom of the announcement. iniBuilds has confirmed a paid expansion called the TriStar Operations Pack, and it takes the L-1011-500 somewhere the passenger aircraft never went in the sim.
The pack introduces three configurations: air-to-air refuelling, a strategic freighter, and a medical and humanitarian evacuation fit. iniBuilds says each variant is being built to capture the operational character of these specialised aircraft rather than existing as a reskin, with bespoke systems, cockpit functionality and operational logic tied to the new roles. For the tanker specifically, the team says work is underway on refuelling system logic, tanker-specific controls, Flight Engineer functionality, exterior equipment and operational lighting, along with a reconfigured interior that swaps the passenger cabin for a mission-focused layout.
On pricing, iniBuilds says the Operations Pack will be a paid add-on offered at a discount to existing TriStar owners, and also sold standalone for anyone drawn more to cargo and special-mission flying than to traditional airline operations. The team also confirmed it will keep updating the main TriStar Airliner pack as needed.
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