Well, the 2024 VATSIM Westbound Cross the Pond event is history. By now all those VATSIM servers will have cooled down from the vast amount of traffic they were handling on Saturday during the event and of course PMDG didn’t release their Boeing 777-300ER just before hand. While this is disappointing, I know from being a PMDG Customer for over 20 years that PMDG only releases when the aircraft is ready to be released.
Looking Forward
There are plenty of things to look forward to in the coming weeks and months. Immediately on the horizon is the SU15 update from Microsoft. While SU15 will bring us the new iniBuilds A320neo, what I’m most looking forward to are the expected performance enhancements we’ve been hearing about in SU15. While SU15 has been delayed from the original target date of 26 March 2024, the new release date is expected to be on 30 April.
Fenix A319/A321
If you already own the awesome Fenix A320, then you also most likely know that the Fenix team have been hard at work to develop both the A319 and the A321 for MSFS. As mentioned in this press release dated 14 April 2024, Fenix states that their A319 and A321 coming along swimmingly and should be entering beta testing very soon. While I don’t want to speculate any possible release date…hopefully we could have these two new Airbus aircraft sometime later this summer.
BlueBird Simulations 757
This is a project I’ve mentioned a few times on my blog. I’m really looking forward to having a quality 757 in MSFS. While we don’t really have any new news on this aircraft or the release date, BlueBird Simulations have recently confirmed they will be at the FSExpo taking place on the weekend of 21 – 23 June and will be showcasing a preview of their new Boeing 757. I’m hopeful we’ll see this release before the end of the year.
iniBuilds A350 and A380
The team at iniBuilds are hard at work creating not only awesome airport scenery, they are also working on two very much needed aircraft for MSFS. While I believe they have every intention on these releasing this calendar year, I believe these would appear somewhat in the later part of 2024 if it happens, or sometime early 2025. Time will tell….
PMDG 777-300ER
Once again…I was wrong with my anticipated release time for this aircraft. Honestly, based on where we thought (or at least I had thought) this aircraft was back in early March…the timing just shouted it would be available in time for the VATSIM CTP. Now I’m honestly scared to speculate. Especially considering we haven’t heard from Robert Randazzo since the 6th of April. OK…I’m game. I’m going to predict we’ll have the PMDG 777-300ER before 1 June. That’s over a month away. But I could still be wrong.
Final Thoughts
As we all know, Microsoft and Asobo are hard at work with the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. While it should be safe to think we’ll have the PMDG 777-300ER and even perhaps other variants of the 777 and possibly even the PMDG 737Max before MSFS 2024 is released, I have a feeling the BlueBird Simulations 757 and the iniBuilds A350 and A380 won’t come out before MSFS 2024.
While MSFS 20204 will be a day one purchase for me, my expectations on when purchased add-ons for MSFS 2020 will be compatible with 2024 may not be a day one thing. What I mean by this is while I’m very much looking forward to MSFS 2024, I am comfortable in knowing that it may take several weeks or perhaps even months before some of our favorite add-on aircraft and scenery will be made available for the new sim. But then again, we really don’t know exactly when MSFS 2024 is expected to be available. Hopefully we’ll all learn more about this after the FSExpo taking place 21-23 June.
Until next time…
Happy Flying!!!
Jerry