Monday, March 2, 2009

More Hints About the PMDG Secret Plane

Ryan from PMDG dropped another couple of hints in the AVSIM forums about the new secret plane that PMDG will be unveiling soon, perhaps within the month. He says:

"Ok guys, here is a real hint - the secret plane is under 90,000 lbs MOTW and it has an FMS."

Hmmm. This rules out the heavies. Someone elsewhere has said that the plane uses an all-glass cockpit, but I cannot confirm this as being official. I will assume for now it is. So, some plausible guesses that remain:
  • Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 -- very strong contender. The latest Q400s have state-of-the-art all-glass displays in the cockpit. The Q400 is becoming a very popular turboprop among regional airlines all over the world these days, and I would really enjoy having a good one in my fleet. Horizon Air flies a bunch of them over my house daily enroute to and from PDX. I'm really hoping for this one.
  • Bombardier CRJ -- a definite possibility, although the CRJ-900 and CRJ-1000 models would exceed the 90,000 lbs threshold. Wilco did a passable CRJ a few years ago, and I would definitely love to see someone do an updated take on one sometime.
  • Embraer ERJ -- possible. Rumor has it that the developer working on the secret plane has worked on an ERJ in the past. However, Wilco is already working on a slick ERJ update, due for release in a few months. As much as I really like PMDG, I would prefer to see them put their efforts into something new and different.
  • BAe 146/Avro RJ -- nope, I checked: MTOW on these is 93,000 lbs. Too heavy. Would be a fun one to fly, although they have largely disappeared from the U.S. Along with the Fokker 100, they still remain fairly popular in Europe, though.
  • ATR-72 -- probably not. Flight1 did a fine ATR add-on a few years ago, and they updated it to work with FSX. I typically use this one to simulate routes flown by turboprops, as it is the only modern one I have.
  • Saab 340B -- possible.
  • Embraer 120 -- possible.
  • Beechcraft 1900D -- PMDG already did one of these, and they could certainly be updated for FSX. Do they have an FMS, though? I didn't think so.
  • Cessna Citation -- probably not. Wilco already has a fine Citation X add-on.
  • Gulfstream private jet -- unlikely. Gulfstream Aerospace has a fairly antagonistic policy toward simulation of their aircraft in flight simulation games. Too bad, as I think this would be fun.
  • Hawker-Beechcraft private jet -- quite possible. This would be new territory for PMDG to explore, and I wouldn't put it past them to roll something out like this.
  • Dassault private jet -- who knows?
  • Something else I might have left off here? Military jet perhaps?
Fun stuff to comtemplate. I would probably bet on seeing a Dash 8 at this point, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part. Guess we will have to wait and see.

1 comment:

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