17 December 2024
Welcome to the next of our Development Updates for the Tornado GR1 for MSFS.
Whilst most of our development team have been focusing resources on the recently released RJ Professional, our internal modelling and texture artist has continued the seemingly never ending task of upgrading and refining the artwork on the Tornado. This work is now complete on both the exterior and interior, bringing our Tornado right up to the cutting edge of flight simulation standards, including very accurate geometry, 8K resolution textures with life-like surface detail and a raft of other intricate details. We hope the attached screenshots show the staggering level of detail our artist has accomplished here!
Our livery artist also continues to make good progress through the product’s extensive livery list, with the German Air Force and German Navy being the latest operators to receive the paint brush treatment. These Tornado IDS/ECR operators are featured with a variety of standard, display, and tiger meet schemes, and this is in addition to the plethora of Royal Air Force, Italian Air Force and Royal Saudi Air Force liveries that will also be included in the product, which all help tell the story of this much loved fast jet.
On the aircraft systems side, the Tornado GR1 will return to having a full-time dedicated coder in the new year, just as it did prior to the release of the RJ Professional. This will significantly speed up the development process and take us ever closer to our goal of having a high-fidelity fast jet in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
The Tornado is something that our development team have an abundance of passion for and we hope that reflects in the final product. We will be sharing more in-development updates on the Tornado as the systems coding, flight model, liveries and sound set continue to be developed and refined in the new year. With regards to MSFS 2020/MSFS 2024 compatibility, it’s still undecided which simulators that we will be able to support with the Tornado, as this largely depends on the number of differences that we find within the SDK as development progresses. However, this is a decision we will have to take pretty soon, so we will keep you fully informed once a decision has been made.
We hope you've enjoyed this update, we aim to bring you more as soon as we can in the New year.
16 February 2024
We’re glad to be able to bring you another Development update for our Tornado GR1 in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
In recent weeks, our talented livery artist has been busy creating an abundance of liveries that will be included at release with the Tornado GR1. These 8K resolution liveries will cover the Tornado GR1, IDS and ECR variants across the Royal Air Force, German Air Force, German Navy, Italian Air Force and Royal Saudi Air Force, in a mixture of standard and special liveries. The images featured in this development update focus on the UK-centric liveries, we’ll show off additional liveries in future updates.
Elsewhere, the Tornado is almost like a mini-airliner in its system complexity, with copious amounts of individual systems in both front and rear cockpits. Unlike some of our previous projects, we have decided against simply upgrading the previous P3D systems code to the MSFS version, we have instead decided to code the aircraft’s systems from scratch. Work is already well underway on this, with functionality added to the electrical, fuel and hydraulic systems that lay the foundations for all other systems.
The recoding of the entire aircraft is no small feat, but with a dedicated systems coder now working on the Tornado GR1 (who previously coded the systems in our F28 Professional), this process should progress at a good pace and we are confident that this will bring our simulation of the Tornado GR1 up to the highest level of fidelity possible within Microsoft Flight Simulator.
We will be sharing more information on the Tornado GR1 as it progresses, but for now, please enjoy the images below.
19 December 2023
The “Tonka” as it is affectionately known is being developed by the same in-house development team that created our critically acclaimed Avro Vulcan B Mk.2, K.2 and MRR, and with the Tornado being an aircraft that the team have an equal amount of interest and passion for, you can expect this to be an equally special product!
The Tornado GR1 model has seen some significant improvements since we posted the initial teaser images, and it remains in line to be our next military aircraft release! Amongst the changes are remodelled sections of the cockpit for even higher levels of accuracy, various exterior modelling fixes and tweaks, and upscaled interior and exterior textures to full 8K resolution for the maximum possible texture clarity. The next task for the development team is the transferring of the already high-fidelity code from the Tornado GR1 in Prepar3D over to MSFS, and then similar to our methods on the Vulcan, once we have a base line code implemented and functional in MSFS, we can spend the majority of our time on improving accuracy and adding additional features to ensure the Tornado operate as close to the real aircraft as possible.
Work has also begun on the 24 paint schemes that will be included in the product, covering various RAF GR1 squadrons, as well as German, Italian and Saudi IDS squadrons.
The development team has exciting plans for the Tornado that we’re looking forward to sharing with you as part of future updates, but for now, please enjoy these images which show off some of the upgraded cockpit artwork and freshly created liveries.
