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Hello everyone, It's been a very busy few weeks! Over the last few weeks, we've released a moderately sized update for PACX (as it is nearly to version 1.0), we fixed a small snag in the TFDi Design 717's navigation display, and of course, have been hard at work on the TFDi Design MD-11. I've included some new renders and information from a few of the developers on the project. To start, I'll quote @Ricardo Ramos, the systems programmer for this project. @ozzman1997 has been doing some incredible work on the model as well. The exterior is nearing completion (still pending texturing, of course), but the cockpit has progressed immensely. Finally, I've been working on the FMC/MCDU (and its associated sensors, computers, and systems). I don't have a screenshot to show this time, as the majority of my work has been behind the scenes. That said, here are some key points of what's been added to the system recently: Triple, independent IRU simulations with simulated drift and realistic alignment behavior (for example, a fast align can be performed once the IRU has captured true north and has been previously aligned). The GNS systems are implemented and have the appropriate amount of sensors and information channels to integrate in a realistic way. The navigation database system has been optimized and brought into the MD-11 and is now being properly read by the FMC, including both primary and secondary databases. The next step is beginning to code flight planning and MCDU operations. Unlike our previous aircraft, we intend to simulate all (except maintenance/third-party software) features of the MCDU, such as wind entry and RTA. Of course, we're still early on, but progress so far bodes well. That's all for now and thanks for reading!

Good morning! I come bearing good news: The New 717 Update As many of you know, the 717 has been plagued with the View Switch CTD for a while now, and the SLI flicker has also been reported. As of April 3rd 2020, both of these bugs are now fixed. This means the CTD when switching views no longer occurs, and the SLI flicker when running two graphics cards has also been fully resolved. On behalf of everyone at TFDi Design, we would like to thank our small team of affected users and testers with bringing this resolution out as the final update of the TFDi Design 717, version 1.1.4.0. For People Affected by the SLI Flicker There are some additional steps that need to be taken in order to support the fix. In the Prepar3D v4\SimObjects\Airplanes\TFDi_Design_717\Panel\LegacyRender folder, there will be a Panel.cfg and 717.dll file. Copy these two items into the directory above, TFDi_Design_717\Panel folder. This will allow the TFDi Design 717 to support SLI. If there are any problems or you need some additional help, please reach out to the support team here.

Opening We've been quiet while we've had our heads down recently, but it is time to show everybody what we've been doing! We have changed how we structure some of our development planning by splitting it into seasons. These seasons coincide with the traditional fiscal quarters and, for now, we plan on doing a major development update at least once per season with development streams and shorter updates in between. PACX We've been working slowly and steadily on improvements to PACX. Since the last time we talked about it, we've crushed a number of bugs and implemented a few requests from the community. Among these are items like improvements to record filtering, refinements and fixes for certain in-flight announcements, and general stability and performance improvements. We plan to start testing on this update relatively soon after the holidays to keep things fresh. One of the most requested items for PACX was additional voice packs and we intend to deliver. We've been working on the internal tools needed to create a thorough and immersive voice pack expansion remotely. This expansion will include a number of new voice packs in different languages and accents, as well as some changes to make the experience more realistic in those areas. The good news is that these tools are almost complete. We will soon be putting out a call for voice actors/actresses and/or flight attendants from around the globe to work with us in creating the new voice packs. smartCARS 3 The smartCARS 3 team has been working on some impressive items. The user interface is still very much a work in progress, so I will not be sharing any images here, but I will go into more technical detail about what's going on under the hood. smartCARS 3 is a platform as much as it is an application. We have created a plugin system that allows third party developers to have the same level of access to the core functionality that we are using to create it. This means that virtual airlines and communities can create a truly custom and personalized experience while still benefitting from the existing work done by others and by our team. For example, let's say a virtual airline created a completely custom booking and dispatching system that is totally incompatible with the way smartCARS handles it. This virtual airline could spend a few hours and create a new booking module that their pilots can install that works with their custom system. These pilots can still use smartCARS and benefit from the rest of the features without having to sacrifice the individuality and immersive experience that the virtual airline created. smartCARS 3 will be a huge improvement from the pilot's perspective as well. We've taken a huge number of requests over the years and we are implementing those as faithfully as possible. Little inefficiencies, such as the un-resizable window and auto-scrolling chat will become things of the past. The flight tracking and logging experience will be much more thorough and refined. The review of past flights will be much more detailed and useful, instead of simply seeing the PIREP text a second time. Even the smartCARS Premium features will become much more compelling and useful - allowing a greater amount of flexibility and dependability from your flying experience. When the user interface is ready, we will do a deep dive into the details of some of these new features and demonstrate all that it is capable of. In the meantime, just know that we have heard your requests and feedback and they are shaping the future of smartCARS. MD-11 The MD-11 has been making significant progress over the last several months as well. We can now officially announce that we have partnered with Turbine Sound Studios to create an immersive sound experience for the MD-11. More and more systems have been brought online in the last few months and functionality is getting more complex and realistic. Since the last development update, we've got the FADEC and engine computers implemented, the first part of the flight control systems and FCC working, improvements and additions to the electrical and hydraulic systems, and work has begun in the pneumatic system. The standby display is also now nearly complete, bringing another complex piece of electronics online in the cockpit. In the visual and artwork front, huge improvements have been made. The texturing of the cockpit has started, as well as the mapping and animation of the buttons and switches. It's worth noting that the cockpit seems VERY worn/dirty. This is an option - it's easier for us to create it at maximum wear and tear then reduce it than it is to go the other way. You will have the ability to select the level of wear and tear you'd like. The tools we've created to help develop and test the aircraft outside of the sim have also made getting it into the sim faster, so we expect to see a lot of functionality in the cockpit very soon. The cockpit isn't the only area getting attention, though. The exterior texturing and liveries are well underway. We have a pretty solid list of liveries we want to have available at launch and we're making good progress on them. As always, all of the images shown here are work-in-progress and not necessarily reflective of the final, refined product. If you see something that is out of place or not quite perfect, feel free to let us know, but it may be an issue we're already aware of and will fix at some point before release. We actively encourage participation via our Discord server. One final item that we've discussed on some of our streams but haven't officially stated yet is the price point. As of now, we anticipate the product being available as a base pack and two expansions. The base pack will either be the cargo or passenger version (your choice) and the other will be available for a small upgrade. We also plan on releasing a failures package that will include a full failures menu, operations-based failures and faults, and more. As of now, the base price is expected to be $89.99 USD. The expansion packages will be priced fairly with respect to scope and significance of the work required to create them. Closing Thank you for reading and if you haven't already, I posted our yearly review article here.

Hello friends, First of all thanks to the development team for this amazing aircraft. My name is Jose Antonio Montiel from Málaga I am 24 years old, I am aircraft mechanic in the real life and I have worked a few in the B717-200, at present I work in the B737. I would like to share my little knowledge with you. In the B717 there are two types of reduced thrust: * Limit thrust: is a % lower of thrust for the total thrust in the current OAT or FLEX/Assume Temperature. TO1 -10% TO2 -20% . *FLEX TEMP: is a temperature that we put in the FMS so that the FADEC misleads the engine to assume more temperature than it actually is and thus obtain a lower thrust. Ok, how do we calculate our FLEX TEMP for current conditions? We have: * T/O Weight 53.000 Kgs * Airport Elevation 1.000ft * RWY Lenght 2.200 Meters and dry * Winds 10 HW * Slope 0% * OAT 20ºC * Flaps configuration 13º * Type Engine BR700-715C1-30 So that we can know our FLEX TEMP we have to calculate our maximum temperature that we can assume with our take off weight, how? Ok we go to de FCOM performance dispach and choose the table for our conditions: The first step is RWY Lenght corrections: Is 2.290 Meters. And second stet calculate our Max FLEX TEMP with T/O Weight 53.000 kgs FLEX TEMP is 40ºC, 45ºC It could not be because the Maximum take off weight(performance, not structural) is less than we have 51.300 kgs and the same for Climb Limit weight (performance). Regards

This morning, we posted a (not so) cryptic tweet on our Twitter. The time has come for the announcement we mentioned. So, without further ado, I would like to announce the development of the TFDi Design MD-11. Before the questions come in, I will answer some of the important ones here. Project Status No, we cannot announce a release date. With that said, we are actually announcing this project a tad earlier than we originally expected. Although progress has been solid (and relatively quick), our intent was to show the aircraft off working in-sim as the first preview. We’re still a bit out from that (although, not TOO terribly far). We decided to do this today as recent announcements would have left the community wondering if there was going to be one in this market at all. We are happy to announce that we will be filling that gap. We have a larger team working on this aircraft than we had on the last, as well significantly more experience, which will allow us to develop it better and faster. We will, as always, keep the community up to date on development via our official social media and our Discord. Fidelity Our last aircraft, the TFDi Design 717, was a fantastic learning experience for us. We intend to build on that experience to create an even deeper, richer, and more realistic simulation on the MD-11. The similarities in the systems, as well as refined processes and technologies, will allow us to create something even the most experienced MD-11 crew and enthusiasts will enjoy. Simulation Support As of today, our intent is to natively support Prepar3D v4 and v5 at the time of release. It is a possibility that we will create a modified version of the product to support older simulation platforms (FSX, FSX:SE, Prepar3D v1-3), but we do not want to limit the potential of the product by designing it around dated standards. We have not yet made an official statement regarding Flight Simulator 2020. We will continue to monitor the development of this platform and will do our best to support it. We intend to develop this aircraft in a format that will allow cross-compatibility in a much more practical way. Want to get Involved? As some of you may remember, when we announced the TFDi Design 717, we also put out a call to all community members. This call was to help us by providing documents, videos, photos, sound clips, data, or even their personal experience and knowledge. It was thanks, largely, to this help from the community that we were able to deliver the level of accuracy that we did. Once again, we would like to put this call out. If you have any of the following, please do reach out to us to help us create the best product possible. Aircraft reference documents (FCOM, FCTM, etc.) Any aircraft photos (even of the most obscure items) Sound clips (such as aural warnings, unique flight deck sounds, etc.) Videos Engine data (such as EPR charts/tables, fuel flow data, etc.) Although we do already have a good amount of reference material, the more we have, the better we can do. We will, of course, continue to research and acquire our own reference material. Thank you, in advance, to anyone who is able to help! To submit information, please use this form. House Keeping TFDi Design 717 for Prepar3D v5 This is still in progress. We have the aircraft and its associated dependencies working in V5 and will be starting formal testing soon. We appreciate your continued patience. TrueGlass and RealLight for Prepar3D v5 To our commercial customers, we are working on this, as well. They are both operating in Prepar3D v5, but we are awaiting answers from Lockheed Martin to help us eliminate a few snags before we begin formal testing. If you are interested in testing the current iteration of the Prepar3D v5 versions, please reach out to your point of contact. PACX We are using the feedback we received from the community survey to develop and refine the product. We have some cool items in progress that should be ready for testing in the near future. Our intent is to wrap up a solid version 1.0 over the next 3 to 6 weeks and complete the Early Access phase of the product’s life. smartCARS 3.X This is something we have been alluding to for quite some time. We are working on a few potential directions we can take the development to create the best possible product for our customers and their pilots. There will be more announcements and development updates relating specifically to smartCARS 3.X as they become available. Closing Well, that about sums up our current status. We do intend to be more active in our Discord and on our social media regarding development updates for all products. A huge part of what makes us who we are, as a company, is our presence in the community and we intend to continue developing that relationship over the coming months. Thank you all for your support and for reading. We’re looking forward to embarking on this journey together!

Good afternoon folks! I hope that you have all been doing well and looking forward to your weekend! It has been a while since our last update, but we wanted to update you on our development progress before the week is out! Passenger and Crew Experience If you haven’t kept up to date with our beta testing, PACX has some awesome new features that are available for testers in our Discord server in the #pacx-testers channel. Let’s summarise the new features! MSFS 2020 Compatibility Testing has recently been completed in which the all-new PACX HUD and PACXBridge were made compatible with MSFS 2020. We are pleased to report that all tests were hugely successful and the opt-in community testing helped us polish it up. Cabin Layouts and Passenger Simulations One of the more-requested features of PACX in recent months was the ability to view passengers as they walk through the cabin of the aircraft within the application. If they are boarding and trying to find their seat, or even going to the toilet, you will see the passenger “dot” moving around in real-time! These cabin layouts are also not static and have been designed to make them customisable! This allows you, as a user, to create your own cabin layout at any time, for any aircraft in any configuration. The passenger simulation aims to be as smooth and realistic as possible so that the behaviour of your passengers and crew are as realistic and efficient as possible. You also have the opportunity to click any passenger to find them on the list, and their colour will change depending on their current satisfaction! To make this even better, all features of PACX have been adjusted to be based on the passenger simulation. Internal features such as boarding, de-boarding, in-flight service etc. have all been made to work around the new simulation giving more significance to the cabin simulation. We have also been asked various questions about how to customise flight comments, names and cabin layouts. We have also been asked about how the career mode works. To alleviate your worries, the following forum posts will make things much easier for you to understand! TFDi Design MD-11 The much-anticipated aircraft is still in active development, despite the seemingly large amounts of time developing PACX. In the background, our team of modellers and programmers are hard at work getting the MD-11 ready! Model The model is still being worked on, despite it still being “in the hangar”! With the latest improvements, the exterior model nears completion, while the cockpit is still being worked on. As of September 14th, the centre landing gear and bay are fully complete, with the rear cargo door, 3D cabin doors and a virtual cabin have been added. The next steps for the model include some probes, lights and the APU exhaust. Once complete, the paint kit will be started and the overhead panel of the cockpit will be worked on. FMS The Flight Management systems have still had significant progress made on them. At the time of writing, the FMS is capable of creating a flight plan based on navigation data. SID and STAR programming is in progress, but is expected to complete relatively soon. In addition to this, the VERT REV and LAT REV pages are nearly completed and are on our internal testing software, created exclusively for the MD-11. The FMS is a major portion of the commercial airliner experience, hence the large amount of up-front development effort being put toward it. As it continues to progress and eventually move toward completion, development on the rest of the systems will speed up even more. Systems In terms of electrical systems, Ricardo has been hard at work to get the emergency power logic working, as well as support for external power, smoke switches and the APU bus tie relay. Various other power systems are being worked on and the core functionality regarding power has been largely completed, and is now being specialised further. In addition to the power logic, Ricardo has also started to work on the Hydraulic systems, including calls to the hydraulic system and the overhead panel lights and switches. Various tweaks to original logic has also been reworked to make it more functional and true-to-life. Wrap Up Thank you for reading and your interest! As always, we'll do our best to keep everyone up to date. If you'd like to chat with us and be part of our growing community, join us on Discord!

Title says it all. Adds so much realism and immersion if you’d ask me.

Happy Holidays! As we move into December, we have an exciting holiday presale event to announce. Starting December 1st, 2022 at 1200z, we will be offering a limited number of copies, 1,000 to be exact, of the TFDi Design MD-11 Collector’s Edition for $80 USD! The Collector's Edition will work on both MSFS and P3D simulators. In addition to supporting us, purchasing this special, limited-edition release gives you: The TFDi Design MD-11 Base Package The Freighter Expansion The Extended Simulation Package This includes advanced failures and the in-flight instructor system The ER (Extended Range) Variant This special variant will never be sold outside of this presale Guaranteed beta access Access to an exclusive Discord channel where development updates will be previewed early A personalized certificate of sale showing your MD-11's sequence number This will be unique to our customers – only purchased versions will be issued with a certificate! Although the TFDi Design MD-11 is still in development, we are near the final stages and still intend to release the aircraft to the public by the end of September 2023, early supporters will be able to access beta builds when ready and provide direct feedback to our developers working on the project. The price point of the product has also been revised. The new structure is as follows: $70 for the base pack (passenger or freighter, both engine models) $10 for the freighter/passenger version (dependant on which base pack was bought) $5 for the Extended Simulation Package If you are interested in getting your hands on the TFDi Design MD-11 early and working with our team as we finalize the development, you can save $5 on the entire package as well as gain an exclusive pre-sale expansion. The pre-sale will begin on December 1st, 2022 at 1200Z and our team will be available to answer questions live in Discord at release to help you out! (And to crazyforiphone#9110 who guessed this was about smartCARS 3, wait a month 😉 ) Also, enjoy some photos:

I only found out about this because of an email from TFDi this morning (Saturday 3rd Dec) about a security breach during the pre-order sale. I'm subscribed to updates so I was surprised I didn't see anything about the pre-order sale in advance. So I had no chance to try and join the queue. The whole point of subscribing to news is that you don't have to go to the forum regularly to get updates, or at least it should be the point. I also think it's strange the ER version is only available to the lucky 1,000. It seems an odd decision to develop a version with the extra fuel tank but only release it to the pre-order customers (and presumably the beta testers). Let them get it free as a reward, but please let regular customers get a copy for an appropriately small price. I'm a big fan of TFDi and I will buy the MD-11 when it is released but this pre-sale process hasn't been handled fairly. Kevin

Hey everybody, sorry for the lack of clarity here. Although DirectX 12 does require some extra coding on our end, we do definitely intend to support Prepar3D V5. Our terrain radar and weather radar depend on software that may not be available immediately for Prepar3D v5, but we have total control of the rest of the software stack the aircraft depends on, so compatibility shouldn't be an issue. Truly, it'll just be a matter of creating and testing the new version to ensure stability. So, officially, yes, the aircraft will support V5. I am not entirely sure when, but it will not be too terribly long.

I've started work on another challenging livery. I'm not sure why I do this to myself but I do! A very, very early WIP. The source material for the new livery on the 717 is pretty scarce so I'm hoping I can figure out how the hidden parts of the paint that aren't obvious in photos are placed. To add insult to injury some of the registrations in the fleet with the new livery have slight variations between how the livery is applied to them! I'm working on N490HA which has cockpit brow windows. Don't expect this one anytime soon 😝 I'll update this post as I make further progress (or hit walls and/or creativity block). Cheers Daniel

Livery Manager - yes or no?

It is my absolute pleasure to announce that this little critter bug has finally been squashed! (read: we fixed it!) After working closely with LM (thanks everyone!), we were able to pinpoint exactly what was causing this view switch CTD and resolve it. Our amazing test team that I had gathered last year (wow... time sure flies!) worked hard to assure us that the bug is indeed resolved and confirmed they had been getting no further CTDs related to the view switch. I'd like to take this time to thank the entire View Switch Test Team -- you know who you are -- THANK YOU for all your efforts in helping us improve our product. Thank you for the days and nights you spent in front of the simulator and Discord, giving us info that transformed a "needle in the haystack" task into something with much more direction. Without your part, we would have absolutely no clue where to even start, as none of us on the internal team has ever gotten this bug. And finally, to our customers -- thank you for putting your trust in me when I started to revisit this last year. Thank you for sticking around and showing your support with those positive posts on this forum thread. We are very excited to roll this update out to you and we hope you enjoy. Once again, thank you to our View Switch Test Team, customers and supporters, and my colleagues. WE DID IT!

Thanks all! Progress is painstakingly slow but I'm getting there! 😎 The biggest challenge will be to get the grey maile lei correct on the top and belly of the fuselage. Here is a little sneak preview. I've cropped it to filter out all the incomplete bits

Event IDs and Local Variable Master List for use with hardware assignments (FSUIPC, SPAD.neXt. etc.), the key_event functions, or our SimConnect trigger event API. SimConnect API Events (Currently applies to Community Opt-in Beta versions only) for use with custom code:

First of all, I would like to say thank you to every person who has submitted content for the MD-11. We have been inundated with key materials that will contribute directly to the development of the aircraft.Everything is greatly appreciated. If you do have any more manuals, diagrams, photographs, or information please continue to send them in right here. A big shoutout to @ozzman1997 for his continued hard work on the exterior model. The control surfaces are now all exported from the model and our flight dynamics programmer will soon begin his work from the amazing material that has been submitted by the community to ensure the MD-11 flies like the real deal! For our livery painters who wish to work on new liveries for the MD-11, Ozzy has also confirmed that the windows can be configured via the alpha channel, simply by manipulating the alpha channel of the albedo map. If you are interested in learning more, this forum post is great to read: On the backend, further development is still ongoing for non-visual requirements and we can’t show these at the moment. Once this is further down the road, we intend to explain this in a little more detail for you to read through when we have more to discuss. Another big item is that we managed to get the aircraft systems working ahead of the models and textures. With recent work from Collin, the FMC is now being worked on and the image above shows an FMC added to some user submitted images. It is important to remember that this is a work in progress, using user submitted files that allow us to make this look correct in place. This is not representative of the final product! Although the above image only shows a small amount of functionality, the system driving it is important. We are using a system that lets us write and debug code better and easier and eliminates a lot of the bottlenecks we usually encounter. This will become a testbed for our systems code and allow us to develop and test the aircraft while Ozzy is creating the visual elements. A short note from @RogueShadow, one of the MD-11 Developers: To Summarise The aircraft has a lot of work being done but we are still unable to provide a release date, or even an estimate. We hope that regular development updates that we release will allow you to see what is being done on the aircraft. Understandably, these will slow down as in depth code writing begins to pick up, as we would be unable to share that! That being said, we hope to supplement these updates with developer streams on Twitch so you can see the work that is being done when it gets to the finer details! Thank you, and have a great week! - Josh

Hi ! I know that you can't make any official statement about the support of this platform, but I just wanted to told you that it would be really cool to have this very promising product in MSFS ! Best regards, and I wish you all the best for the developement of the MD11

I would also like if you retain the same format for the EFB. it's great as is. A perf type flex calculator would be a great addon to get flex temp. But I think you nailed it with the docs, external, and status

Hoppies ACARS/CPDLC integration in the CDU's would be an excellent feature. Can it be considered? Glen

A week ago was FlightSimExpo, which we attended with a bunch of people from our team! If you managed to attend in person, hopefully, you managed to say hello and ask any questions you had to our team directly. This blog post will cover everything you need to know if you did not manage to attend, or missed our presentation. If you’d like to watch the live video announcement, check out the recording by SizzlingPopcorn below. MD-11 Our eagerly anticipated aircraft has also made further significant progress since the last development update posted in November last year (that’s a long time!). Our most asked question was whether the MD-11 will be coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator. We can finally confirm that yes, the MD-11 will be coming to both Microsoft Flight Simulator and Prepar3D on day one. The Microsoft Flight Simulator and Prepar3D version will use very similar codebases and, as a result, it should offer a very similar experience (within the technical limitations of the simulator platforms, of course). We also showed the aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator with the experimental livery as the original plane was tested with: Finally, we talked about some of the extended functionality this aircraft will have. Not only are we intending to cover the main variations (freighter, passenger, etc.), but we also plan on a “failures package” that will allow simulation of non-standard flight procedures. smartCARS 3 In the middle of the massive news regarding the MD-11, we also managed to show off the new version of the most used flight tracker for Virtual Airlines, smartCARS. In our presentation, we showed how smartCARS will grow from just an application to a platform for virtual airlines. We have built systems that allow airline administrators to add and change elements of smartCARS 3 through our API and allow the application to fit the virtual airline, rather than the other way around. Through our development of smartCARS 3, we have ensured that it can be run in as many environments as possible. smartCARS 3 will be able to natively support phpVMS v5 and phpVMS v7 without any significant changes being required. We are designing the application with cross-platform functionality in mind, including allowing it to track your flights on various operating systems, such as macOS and even Linux! PACX Of course, no product pipeline update would be complete without mentioning our Passenger and Crew Experience utility, PACX. We are working on creating a set of asynchronous tools and workflows to allow us to bring a whole host of new voice packs to the application. We will be bringing new languages and accents to PACX to offer a more native, immersive experience around the world. More information about this update will be released in due course, but our team are actively working on the new features! Closing Phew, that was a lot of information all at once. Hopefully, it was worth the wait! We did an interview with FSElite, who asked us some questions regarding the development of our products. You can check out the interview here:

Absolutely!