In the midst of all the jet planes being made available for Prepar3D v4, one of the most sophisticated turboprop aircraft has yet to make the transition to thew 64-bit sim yet. Of course, I’m referring to the Majestic Software Dash-8 Q400. Since the release of P3Dv4, the team have provided a few updates with their progress and today, they’ve given some more insight into both the Training Edition and the 64-bit version.
In their original announcement, they said they would continue to push towards a release for the Training Edition first and then continue to work on the P3Dv4 version of the Q400. Since then, they have changed their decision and will instead first focus on the changes to ensure that the Dash-8 Q400 is compatible with Prepar3D v4 first. Whilst this may be good news for people awaiting the aircraft in their new sim, there is still plenty of work to do.
Majestic said that the current state of the Q400 is that they have ‘the basics working’ in P3Dv4. However, they still need to rewrite multiple code to ensure it’s fully compatible with the 64-bit. For the more technical, this includes the new assembler routines, change the database engine, ensure that the 2D panel rendering works correctly and ensure that the performance is synced. The team are also interested in taking advantage of the specific features found in Prepar3Dv4 to further enhance the product. They’re not quite ready to reveal those details yet, but are working hard towards a release.
As for the Training Edition – it was nearing completion before Lockheed Martin released P3Dv4. The FSX, FSX:SE and P3Dv3 was just about to be pushed for final testing, however when the team looked into the new platform, they realised that would have to revamp pretty much everything already in place. Over the past few months, this is what they’ve been working on and they’ve decided to share a few pictures with the community. There’s no detail regarding what’s going on in the pictures, but you can see what’s expected. Usual caveat: all in development.
There’s also two quick YouTube clips to accompany the screenshots (note: videos are from P3DV3):
So finally, when will this be in our sims? Right now, Majestic aren’t able to provide an accurate time frame. They said they’re committed to providing these types of updates as they see fit.
If we learn more, we’ll let you know here first.
