BAC Lightning F-6 - DC Designs
- Thread starter noddy
- Start date
noddy
SOH-CM-2024
Again from FB, also update
FRIDAY NEWS UPDATE ( ALL IMAGES ARE WIP! )
Hi folks!
So, as you can tell by the change in the page banner, the last DC Designs aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator will be the BaC Lightning F6. This Cold War fighter was the last of the all-British interceptors and a hugely popular aircraft in many flight simulators over the years, and there have been a lot of requests for me to add it to my line of products. It seemed fitting to finish the line-up on an all-British fighter, as well as the already-announced P-61B Black Widow, which was the very first aircraft I built when learning the process back in 2017. Both aircraft are now well on their way in development, with both flying well in the simulator and being worked on full-time.
There have been a lot of comments and questions asking why I’m calling this the “last” DC Designs aircraft. The reason is that despite the size of the audience for DC and SC aircraft and their obvious popularity over the past four years, I’m actually a very small developer and there is a natural limit to the number of products I can realistically produce and maintain long-term. Although there are many other aircraft I would love to build for the simulator, making more products simply to make more money isn’t the way I want to go. I’d rather have a good line of aircraft products that I can still update and maintain myself, than have too many to manage and start letting customers down. The recent introduction of MSFS2024 and its obvious issues and differences from MSFS2020 mean that the update workload will be quite high for some time, and I can’t do all that while also producing new content, as much as I would like to. I could expand the company instead, but I don’t want to become a people-manager – I like working on as much of these aircraft myself as I can, rather than do what some others do and simply have all the work done by third-parties and then put their name on them. With the P-61 and the Lighting, I will have eleven aircraft in all to look after, quite enough for me.
In anticipation of questions and requests, there won’t be any extra variants of either aircraft type included, such as the P-61C or the Lightning F3 / T5 etc – these will be single-variant packages. Both will contain many liveries though, to ensure plenty of variability and choice for the owners. Both will also have the usual high-quality custom sounds from Sim Acoustics, recorded from the real aircraft ( Double-Wasps radials for the Black Widow, and Rolls Royce Avons for the Lightning ). I’m anticipating release for the two aircraft in Q2 2025, with the P-61B leading and the Lightning close behind. Both will probably be MSFS2024 only products, provided the new sim is subject to enough bug fixes and corrections by Asobo.
It is possible in the future that I will build more aircraft, but if I do so, the work will be conducted at a much more “hobbyist” pace. My main focus will be on continuously updating and improving my existing aircraft for the next few years, keeping them high in popularity and up to date with whatever changes are forthcoming in MSFS2024.
Speaking of the new simulator, things are still very unstable there and the audience has recently been returning to MSFS2020 in ever-greater numbers. As soon as the new sim is stable and ready, I will start converting all of my products to it, but until then I’m sitting tight and waiting for Asobo’s updates to put right all of the bugs and issues that are affecting current aircraft, as many of these issues are basic things ( avionics emissives, material settings, LODs etc ) that must be right before we can start conversions knowing that we’re not going to have to do it all over again when something changes on the new platform.
For 2025, I am very much hoping to bring my animated 3D pilots into the cockpits for greater immersion in Virtual Reality, and also continue working on our in-house active weapons system that will allow players to engage in Air-to-Air combat. Both of these projects are underway and are a high priority for me to bring to our products as soon as I can.
Many thanks to all of my customers once again for a great year. Have a very Happy Christmas and New Year!
Happy Friday!!
