Black Square continues to improve the Caravan Professional lineup with the release of version 1.2 of the iconic turboprop hauler for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024. This is the second product update from the developer since the Caravan Professional was released in March of this year. This update brings the Caravan Professional to version 1.2 and focuses on bug fixes and additional soundscape improvements.
With version 1.2, Black Square says that pilots will now hear distinct audio cues for compressor stalls, surging, and catastrophic failures during all phases of flight, including startup and shutdown. Additionally, sounds have been added to all exterior interactive elements during walkarounds, like opening and closing doors. Rounding out the soundscape improvements, Black Square has further refined propeller and engine sound leveling inside and outside the aircraft.
Beyond the soundscape, version 1.2 of the Caravan Professional introduces several quality-of-life and technical refinements. These include: The oxygen system has been made more sophisticated; while crew members consume oxygen as required by regulations, passenger consumption is now dynamically triggered only when the cabin altitude exceeds 14,750 feet. Further bug fixes address unexpected electrical behavior with the ventilation blowers and better synchronize the tablet HTML failure interface in preparation for collaboration with online services. Additionally, the Cargomaster variant’s empty weight has been adjusted to 4,040 lbs to account for the cargo pod, ensuring that weight and balance calculations remain as accurate as possible for short-haul freight operations. The full changelog is below:
Caravan Professional v1.2 Changelog:
New Features:
- Added dynamic under-wing registration to default liveries with better feature support for livery painters.
- Added numerous sounds pertaining to engine damage during startup, shutdown, at all power settings, and several turbine specific engine failures, like compressor stall/surging.
- Sounds for all exterior interactions, like opening and closing doors, are now audible during walkarounds.
- Added seamless support for the native water rudder keybinding while still supporting the tablet interface triggered water rudder cable failure.
- Engine damage will now influence ITT beyond 40% damage.
- Previously, only crew members consumed oxygen, so as to extend the effective range of the aircraft at altitudes where only crew oxygen was required by regulations. Now, passengers will only consume oxygen when the indicated altitude is above 14,750 feet.
Bug Fixes:
- Rewrote code relating to the ventilation blowers, as unexpected electrical behavior resulted from old code from the Analog Caravan.
- Fixed visual synchronization problem with the tablet failure interface when failures were triggered from HTML events, in preparation for collaboration with online services.
- Further refinement of propeller and engine sound leveling inside and outside the aircraft.
- Turbine propeller blade angle animation was mistakenly driven from simplified code from previous Black Square aircraft, which has now been replaced with improved behavior in all other Black Square aircraft.
- The fuel selectors off warning system will no longer activate when the firewall fuel cutoff handle is pulled. The fuel selector off warning horn will also be deactivated when the START CONT circuit breaker is pulled, as the two circuit breakers were previously configured in parallel, not series.
- Increased empty weight of the Cargomaster to 4,040lbs to reflect inclusion of the Cargopod. Useful load and full fuel payload numbers have been adjusted accordingly.
- Yoke-mounted electric trim switches will now only function when the autopilot is powered in addition to the electric trim actuator circuit.
Current owners of the Black Square Caravan Professional can access the update for free in the “Your Orders” section of their JustFlight.com account. For those looking to pick up the aircraft, the Caravan Professional is available in two packages and four airframes, which can be purchased separately or as a bundle from JustFlight.com. Options include: The Caravan Professional Passenger version, or Caravan Professional Amphibian & Cargo. Priced individually, each package is $47.99. A bundle featuring all four variants is available for $64.99. The aircraft is fully compatible with both Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024. Be sure to check out our detailed “First Look” article covering the airplane.
