Majestic Software has provided a brief development update regarding its highly anticipated Dash 8 Q400 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, offering insight into the current state of the project and explaining why progress has taken longer than some users expected.
In a recent forum post, a member of the Majestic team clarified that developing the aircraft involves significantly more work than simply adapting existing code. According to the developer, the team is not currently willing to share its code with other developers, noting that the project requires a much deeper level of integration and system development than many might assume.
The update also explains that development has been particularly time-consuming because the team decided to remodel the aircraft’s exterior, a process that has been ongoing since around June of last year. While this step has extended the timeline, it aims to ensure the final product meets the level of quality users expect from a Majestic aircraft.
From a systems standpoint, the developer indicated that most systems are largely ready, but the full flight deck remodel must first be completed before the team can properly integrate everything and begin full-scale testing. This suggests that the project continues to progress internally, even if public updates have been relatively limited.
The team also addressed concerns about the lack of frequent development updates. They explained that their silence should not be interpreted as the project being abandoned. Instead, development continues steadily behind the scenes, with team members balancing the project alongside their daily work and personal commitments, which can involve long working hours.
Majestic also noted that they plan to share additional images or updates when they are ready to present the current state of the aircraft in a more meaningful way. For now, the team prefers to avoid sharing unfinished previews and instead provide updates when there is clear progress to showcase.
The Dash 8 Q400 is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated turboprop aircraft in flight simulation, particularly due to the highly detailed version previously released for Prepar3D. Because of this reputation, many sim pilots continue to follow the progress of the Microsoft Flight Simulator version closely as development moves forward.
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