A new Development update has been shared by the Flight Sim Studio team, informing the community about the upcoming changes to their popular E-Jets series add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator. As usual, this development update was shared via the developer’s website.
The Recent E-Jets Updates
In the past few months, a lot of things have progressed for the E-Jets series, with many bug fixes being pushed out to the current public release, the team has already improved the systems, displays, sounds, autopilot modes, implemented managed speed and much more.
Partner of FSS, X-Crafts has recently showcased their work on the Lineage E190, the VIP version of the longer E-Jet. The modelling is now complete, with texturing being the next thing to be done. Once the Lineage E190 is finished by X-Crafts, the model will be implemented by Flight Sim Studio to their rendition in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
E2 Series Coming?
The community is asking Flight Sim Studio about the future possibility of developing the E-Jets E2 series, the modern version of Embraer jets, mostly used by KLM in Europe, for example. The team looks forward to implementing this engine and fuselage variant to the current add-on series. However, there is no estimate of when that might happen since the developer now wants to focus on completing the current E-Jets series.
The Near Future
The major part of the development update definitely is the upcoming custom FMS and autopilot. There is plenty of information to be shared. Two full-time developers are working on the custom Primus Epic FMS and autopilot that will be used by this add-on soon.
The core systems are now being developed outside the simulator and will be ported over to the aircraft later on. This allows rapid development and testing, according to the development update post. Currently, the software is capable of connecting to the aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator, rendering gauges with displays, and interfacing the simulator via SimConnect, helping the developers with real-time debugging and performance monitoring.
The current FMS is capable of creating a complete flight plan for any route, functioning like a flight management computer in any other aircraft you can think of. Altitude constraints are also considered. While the FMS is capable of doing this already, there are major points which aren’t completed just yet.
The systems in development cannot draw routes at the moment, there is only a point-to-point connection between the waypoints, but it does not reflect curves depending on speed, thus, both lateral and vertical calculations are not yet being considered by the FMS.
The custom autopilot is also currently in its early stages of development, and it needs to be “taught” how it will manage lateral and vertical profiles, even in bad weather. Lastly, the new MCDU needs to be migrated to the add-on itself. The code currently can’t fly holding entries either, unfortunately.
At first, the Flight Sim Studio development team aimed to release the custom FMS and autopilot for the E-Jets series in the summer. This, though, was not confirmed nor denied in this developer update. It was mentioned that the 1.0 might or might not be released along with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
You can also read more about the Flight Sim Studio E-Jets in one of our articles here.
