In the meanwhile, however, we’ve been hard at work. When we first vacated our positions at the X-Plane Freeware Project, many users felt that our actions were meant to incite some sort of competition. Well, quite frankly, we’ve tried to do our best to be civil about it, and today we hope to finally squelch the warmongering. For the past couple of months, we’ve been hard at work in cooperation with our colleagues at XPFW to bring you one of the most successful narrowbody jets in service today.

So, without further ado, It brings us great pleasure to introduce our latest project: the XP Jets and XPFW Airbus A320 series for X-Plane 9.

The A320 is one of the greatest success stories of modern airliner development. In the 1980s, Airbus began developing a new model aimed at replacing the world’s most popular aircraft at the time, the Boeing 727. The digital technology in the A320 would herald a two-generation technological leap over the all-analog Boeing 727 and be a generation ahead of the Boeing 737-300/-400/-500 series. To that end, Airbus incorporated advanced features including fly-by-wire flight control, composite primary structures, center-of-gravity control using fuel, glass cockpit (EFIS) and a two-person flight deck. First delivered in 1988, the A320 pioneered the use of digital fly-by-wire flight control systems in a commercial aircraft. Powerplants for the A320 family are provided by CFM International (CFM56-5 series) and International Aero Engines (V2500 series).

After entering the market in March 1988 with Air France, Airbus expanded the A320 family rapidly, launching the 185-seat A321 in 1989 (first delivered in 1994), the 124-seat A319 in 1993 (first delivered in 1996), and the 107-seat A318 in 1999 (first delivered in 2003). With more than 3,000 aircraft of the A320 family built, it is the second best-selling jet airliner family of all time after the family’s primary competition, the Boeing 737

Currently, we plan to develop the A320 and A319 series of models, including all derivatives of those two airframes. While we’re currently not ruling out the possibility of future development of either the A318 or A321, they are not on the slate for the time being. For those of you who are curious, here is how we’ve decided to break down our talents on this joint project. We all believe that this combination highlights our specialties as aircraft developers to bring you the best aircraft that we possibly can:

External Model & Master Textures: XPJ
Flight Model: XPJ/XPFW combined
2D Panel: XPJ/XPFW combined
3D Panel/Cockpit: XPFW
Liveries: XPJ/XPFW combined

Although the external model is admittedly quite close to completion, don’t let its current appearance fool you. There is still a mountain of work to do in regards to the panel, flight model, and various other 3D work, so we can’t set any release date or project exactly when it will be ready. We will attempt to provide timely milestone updates as we complete key stages of development (something we were rather horrible at during 777 development!). We will also coordinate with XPFW to cross-post important news on the XPFW forums as development permits.

In the meanwhile, we wish you all blue skies, and enjoy the previews!

Click Images for Larger View:
 

All of us here at XPJ are looking forward to UFMC with great anticipation. It’s the first of many big steps that will improve the airliner simulation experience in X-Plane.

[Click Images for Larger View]

Also, a high-res WMV version is available via MegaUpload

We’d like to extend our thanks to Manuel for showcasing our plane with such professional work!

This is just a few of the many, many liveries we’ll have for this bird. If you have a (real world airline/aircraft combo) livery you’d like us to do, e-mail me and we’ll see what we can do about it

757: External model progressing in leaps and bounds. Started work on flight modeling, engine performance now very close to r/w values. 3D cockpit geometry close to completion, textures soon to follow. Few more tricks in the works…

777: Performance update (and much more) coming soon to round this bird out. Several more liveries in the paint shop. -300ER and -200LR groundwork laid in order to finish out the 777 line. Planned release ~ December/January range.

Cessna: Sadly on hold until Reuben finishes CPL training. Cabin texturing and cockpit work left.

A340: No changes since last update

Unannounced Project: Basic modeling started. Flight modeling work begun. Expect more news around Christmas…

When we first recruited Rodrigo to join XP Jets, he had already made considerable headway into modeling the A340’s cockpit in 3D. So while we re-assigned him to 757 3D cockpit work when he joined up, we knew that the 340 was eventually going to factor into our project matrix. As a result, after some discussion we’ve decided to slap an XPJ badge on it and to make it official.

The A340 will be built to the same exacting standards as the 757. It will feature a detailed 3D exterior done in OBJ8 format with a multitude of animations, accurate flight dynamics, high-resolution texturing, functional 3D cockpit, and much more. Our first priority at the moment, obviously, is continuing to make progress on the 757, so we won’t be picking up on the A340 full-speed until that’s finished. Expect more details to emerge as we continue development, but for now we do have some early previews of the 3D work to show you.

To Alex and I, the 757’s always been one of the most graceful and sleek looking airliners in the world, and we’ve been quite fond of its appearance for several months now (more specifically, basically since we both first laid eyes on the thing). While we were both part of XPFW, we never really found ourselves to be very happy with the state of their (at the time) .acf format 757. When we first branched off to form XPJ, a “new” 757 wasn’t remotely on XPFW’s current radar. So we decided that if we were really going to get the kind of quality out of a 757 that we personally wanted, we were going to have to build it ourselves. We weren’t really trying to step on any toes when we started the project, and by the time XPFW announced theirs, it was really too late to quit on ours. We did come to the decision of payware rather early on, and I think that’s probably sparked some ire among the masses. Obviously, I can sympathize; many of you are probably thinking, “Why pay for one when there’s a freeware model out there?”. Well, whether or not it’s a widely accepted release by our users is going to be their prerogative, and we understand that already. So we’re obviously not expecting to make a fortune off our 757. We do, however, know that XPFW has no plans, for example, to model neither the 757-300 variant nor a 757-200F, both being derivatives that we plan to model.

Basically, the basic attitude at “Camp XPJ” is that there’s enough room in the X-Plane-o-sphere for two high-quality 757 projects, and we feel that our model will offer some things that will (hopefully!) make it worth the price tag.

All numbers aside, 07/08/07 was quite a day for the men and women of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. If you’re like us, and eat, sleep, and breathe aviation, you’ll understand the significance of today’s rollout ceremony of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. There’s not a lot we can really say that hasn’t already been said about this remarkable masterpiece of engineering and technology. So let us be the latest to congratulate Boeing on their tremendous achievement and may we see the Dreamliner soaring its way into the future of air travel next year!

Photos of the 787 rollout (all images Copyright © 2007 Boeing)

(Click Here for a 1920×1080 High-Def version)

As for me, I’ve been working on the fuselage paint kit some more, fine-tuning some of the layers that really make the fuselage textures come “alive” - shine, shading, reflections, dirt, etc. I did, however, find time to mock up a few liveries for renders so that we can show off the model in its current state, so here you go:

(Click for 1920×1080 High-Def versions of AA, CO, NW, and UAL)

Meanwhile, Rodrigo’s been hard at work in Blender as well. Work on the virtual cockpit has started, and I’ll be jumping in on that front as well soon to start texturing his mesh. We do, however, feel that the VC’s at a state we’re comfortable showing even though there are several major parts left to model yet. Rodrigo’s got the pedestal just about completely modeled, and he’s started work on the main panel. Here’s a preview of what’s to come from him:

(Click Here for a 1920×1080 High-Def version)

So there you have it. We’re all very excited about how this bird’s shaping up. That being said, there’s a veritable ton of work left, but we figured you’d all like to see just what we’re up to .