Owner and CEO of BlueBird Simulations, Shervin Ahooraei, has addressed a number of questions and provides an update on the status of the highly anticipated Boeing 757 for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
In an encouraging announcement for the community, Shervin was keen to stress that the fidelity of the aircraft has changed since the project’s inception, going from a ‘mid-level’ product to ‘high-fidelity, study-level’ aircraft.
He said, “We’re taking this project to a new scope. When we announced the project two years ago, we said it was gonna be mid-level. That’s no longer the case. This will be a high fidelity, study-level, whatever you wanna call it, aeroplane. It’s gonna be a very realistic and complex simulation of the aircraft.”
In the 25-minute long video posted on YouTube, Mr Ahooraei firstly addressed the question as to why the 757 wasn’t released in 2023. He says this is in part due to the retirement of the project’s chief programmer Eric who had ‘worked hard on the coding, avionics and systems’ and played a major role in making the 757 what it is today. Shervin announced that Eric will continue to beta test the 757, when the time comes.
Regarding the highly anticipated release date, he makes no promises, but is ‘hopeful for a 2024 release’ but stresses there are no guarantees. After Eric’s departure in 2023, replacement programmers were found, but they decided ‘unanimously’ to start the project’s systems from scratch, with Shervin saying they have made ‘tremendous progress’ since doing so.
Further questions from the community were addressed, such as the release for Xbox, which Shervin says will happen, albeit with limitations due to the inability to run external applications on the platform. Additionally, he confirmed the BlueBird will be released for MSFS 2020, with a free upgrade for Flight Simulator 2024. The cargo variant of the 757 will also be released, however this will be a paid expansion.
After announcing the 767 project, Shervin says previews for the larger, wide-body aircraft will appear at ‘the end of 2024 or early 2025’.
The video update also featured a fairly comprehensive look at various systems and other areas of the project, as we heard from various members of the team. Viewers were told the virtual cockpit has been totally reworked over the last five months, with the team redoing ‘almost everything’. In the coming weeks, the cockpit will see it’s ‘fifth and final iteration’.
Shervin also announced that a new sound developer has joined the team. Boris, from Boris Audio Works will set to work soon and hopes to preview the aircraft sounds ‘in the next couple of months’.
We also got to see a demonstration of the aircraft avionics, terrain display and even a demo of the circuit breaker system, in which every circuit breaker will simulate a realistic response with its respected system when pulled. In the video, we hear from BlueBird’s systems software developer, who explains that a great deal of time and effort has gone into converting real aircraft schematic diagrams into C++ code.
Finally, Shervin announced a partnership with Navigraph, to help seamlessly integrate Navigraph data into both the 757 EFB and flight management system. Navigraph is a leading provider of flight simulation software that offers a wide range of products including aeronautical charts, navigation data, and flight planning tools.
As anticipation builds for the release of the BlueBird Simulations 757, we will continue to monitor the progress of the project and keep you up to speed.
