Horizon Simulations, the team behind popular mods bringing FlyByWire’s A32NX upgrades into the LatinVFR fleet of Airbuses, have issued the first lengthy update on the progress of their Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner since it was first announced just under a month ago.
The update, published on the team’s Discord Server by moderator davidn123, begins by acknowledging that the 787-9 for MSFS is the team’s “most anticipated” project to date. It states that the project has hit a major milestone at the time of writing – namely that as of today the the 787-9 project is out of its alpha stage and will now enter an internal beta development and testing phase.
David then goes into further detail around what the team have so far accomplished with the 787-9, starting with:
Model
The plane is looking “rather stunning” in David’s own words. Images which David attached to his post show the aircraft in various lighting conditions and times of day, We also see it sporting three popular liveries, those of China Southern Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Juneyao Air. We also previously saw the plane painted in liveries for Norse Atlantic and Air New Zealand.
Also courtesy of a chart breaking down each section of the plane’s development, we can thank Qbit, Kuro and Max from the tam for the hard work that has been done here. David stresses that “we can’t put enough emphasis on the amount of work that went into making sure that she looks like something we can proudly call a Horizon Simulations product”.
There is still some work to do on the model, but this amounts to tidying up the rough edges and the bulk of the work here is now done.
Liveries
Besides the three liveries that we see in the preview images, no further base package liveries are confirmed at this stage. David does note that the team made the intentional decision to paint the aircraft as if it has a bit of wear and tear, and not “just out of the factory”. This, he says, will increase the overall immersion of using the product.
We also learn in this update that a decision has already been taken to push the plane on release day without any liveries, including the various liveries that will be done in a base package as a separate download. This is being done in order to keep file sizes low and download times swift.
Paint-Kit
David has some good news for you – the paint kit for the Boeing 787-9 will release ahead of the launch of the product. This, says David, is part of an overall community-friendly approach of making sure that all the talented creators in the flight sim space can showcase their hard work and talent in creating liveries from day one.
Release Date
Now the piece of information we’ve all been waiting for. As of now, the team are not going to be promising a fixed date for release, for the understandable reasoning that “we do not wish to make the mistake of over promising, and then under delivering, on any aspect of our work”.
David says that with Sim Update 13 on the immediate horizon, the remaining work to be done is to ensure that everything is still working fine once that drops and make sure the plane has had a good bit of polish prior to going public. Our first glimpse of this plane in the simulator should be when it gets into the hands of “well established streamers”, and at the same time staff members who are currently under an NDA will be then allowed to post more photos and answer questions about the project.
FSElite will keep you abeam of any further updates to the Boeing 787-9 project.
