Developer TriTriSim has released its GFX product for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020/2024.
TriTriSim says the package uses its own real-time, CFD-driven calculations to determine exactly when visual effects should appear, using live aircraft and atmospheric data.
The system dynamically responds to factors including humidity, pressure, air density, speed, and angle of attack, ensuring effects are only shown when conditions would realistically allow them. A Cinematic Mode is also included, giving users the option to manually override these variables for custom visuals.
At launch, GFX Airliner features a broad selection of effects, with many tailored specifically for supported aircraft. These include cold-start engine smoke and vapour burn-off, jet blast reacting with rain-soaked surfaces, water spray trails from landing gear on wet runways, wingtip and flap vortices, engine intake condensation, wing surface condensation, wing fade effects when passing through cloud layers, volumetric contrails, and AI traffic contrails.
The tool currently works with a range of aircraft, including the default A320neo, FlyByWire Simulations A32NX and A380X, the entire Fenix A320 fleet and FlightFX’s Cessna Citation X C750. Expect to also see the iniBuilds aircraft work, along with the PMDG jets, the Aerosoft A340 Pro, the iFly 737 MAX and also TFDi Design’s MD-11.
You can buy TriTriSim’s GFX tool from their site for $19.99 USD.
What about SimFX and Parallel 42?
In related news, Parallel 42 gave a statement surrounding why they haven’t brought their SimFX or Immersion Packages to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. In light of this release, the team said that they want to address the comments “front and center”.
Firstly, Parallel 42 said that SimFX is a global visual tool that touches all areas, beyond aircraft (think auroras), which works universally across most aircraft without any user input. The immersion packs were always designed to be built on top of it to add specific qualities to a fleet of planes. Parallel 42 stands by the fact that they never said visual effects in 2024 couldn’t be done, but they are saying that they are unable to build something in the new simulator that meets their quality or ease of use.
What they are saying is that replicating this full experience would require the team to build a product that requires techniques that “are intrusive by nature, high maintenance and in some cases would require shipping Intellectual Property (that is not ours) in the form of behavior files”. They said even if they were to build something of this nature (they’re not), then it would still be a “departure from the full experience” that they had previously been able to offer.
