When TFDi Design first released the MD-11 after four and a half years of development and a pre-sale that drew its share of criticism, the reception was mixed. The community expected more, and for a year and a half, the MD-11 sat in an uncomfortable position: the only serious rendition of a much-loved trijet, and one that a lot of people were waiting to buy properly.
The January “definitive edition” update changed that conversation completely. TFDi discarded the old exterior in favour of a scratch-built mesh, added the Pratt & Whitney 4460/4462 engine variants, shipped the Extended Simulation package with its component wear and failure modelling, and brought the aircraft natively into MSFS 2024 with walkaround support. Existing owners paid $5 for the transition rather than being asked to rebuy. By March, with the stability patches out, TFDi declared active development concluded and turned toward other projects.
But before announcing any new thing, they just released the MD-11 for Xbox. This version carries the same systems simulation and visuals as the PC release. Both the passenger and freighter versions are included in a single purchase, which is a departure from the à la carte structure on PC, where the first variant costs $74.99 and the second $9.99. Marketplace pricing for the console package sits at around $84.99, so the total lands in roughly the same place for anyone who wanted both bodies.
Eighteen liveries are installed with the aircraft:
- Passenger, GE: CITYBIRD, Finnair Retro, American Airlines
- Passenger, PW: VARIG Star Alliance, SWISS, Delta “Atlanta Olympics 1996”, Delta “Widget” with SkyTeam sticker, KLM old colours
- Freighter, GE: Lufthansa Cargo “Aktion Deutschland Hilft”, Centurion Air Cargo, Saudi Arabian Cargo, Western Global, UPS, FedEx
- Freighter, PW: UPS, FedEx, Korean Air Cargo, Avient Cargo
There is also a choice between high-poly and low-poly cabin models for performance, which is a sensible inclusion on hardware where you cannot simply throw more GPU at a frame rate problem. The release covers both Flight Simulator 2020 and Flight Simulator 2024.
The part that stayed on PC
Extended Simulation is not available on Xbox. TFDi explained the reasoning back in November, when the developer said the module was unlikely to make it to console at launch because of interface and management limitations.
The practical consequence is that console pilots get the airframe, the rebuilt visuals and the full systems simulation, but not the service-based failures, the component wear that accrues only while systems are running, or the per-livery maintenance log that gives each airframe its own history. Those features were a meaningful part of why the January update was received as a genuine relaunch rather than a patch, so their absence is worth knowing about before purchase.
For what it is worth, the Extended Simulation package costs $4.99 on PC, so this is not a large sum of money being withheld. It is a capability difference rather than a pricing one.
Xbox was the last outstanding item on a roadmap that TFDi first sketched out over a year ago, and it closes out a project the studio has been working on since 2019. Console pilots now have a trijet that sits alongside the PMDG 737 and 777 fleets and the iniBuilds Airbus family, and one that arguably asks more of its pilot than any of them.
What TFDi does with the bandwidth it has freed up is the more interesting question now. The community has its theories, and a certain Boeing 717 comes up more often than anything else. Let’s stay curious!
