The last summary we wrote about Felis’ Boeing 747-200 project for X-Plane 11 was last January. Since then, lots of progress has been made on the upcoming aircraft. 

The developer has mainly been working on the flight engineer’s panel, nearly finishing it. Therefore, significant progress has been made on the electrical and hydraulic systems as well as on the pressurization and air conditioning systems, all controlled by the flight engineer in this retro cockpit.

He also indicated that the fuel system was about 90% done and that the remaining 10% would be done with flight testing. 

The pressurization was not only implemented inside the cockpit, but also on the exterior model with the addition of animated valves. Originally, the developer had planned to use X-Plane’s default pressurization system but ended up custom coding all of it. 

After that, Felis concentrated on flight controls, landing gear and brake logics. A video was also posted on the developer’s Youtube channel available below. 

Felis then worked on emergency systems, including the APU and engine fires visible on the airframe, the interior fire annunciators, cockpit smoke, and finally fuel dump. 

The aeroplane is now fully compatible with X-Plane’s native ground handling but Felis is considering adding support for JAR Design’s Ground Handling Deluxe Plugin. The 742 also works with JAR’s Tugmaster Deluxe and Saso Kiselkov’s Better Pushback. 

Lots of work was done inside the cockpit, especially on 3D modelling, textures and lighting. 

The developer then moved on to the instruments’ animations to make them fully functional in-sim. 

Many systems were implemented, notably the TCAS, transponder, weather radar, radios, navigational systems, the yaw damper and autopilot. 

The exterior model was refined, with visible mechanical parts being added. 

Saso Kiselkov’s Librain plugin which brings with it realistic rain effects, was implemented and also works with the wiper animation. 

To finish off this summary, Felis has started to work on the overhead panel and below is available a preview of the panel with their implementation status written.

The aircraft is about half-done according to the developer. Threshold will continue to cover Felis’ Boeing 747-200 “Queen of the Skies” in our editorial. 

To keep a close eye on the project, join Felis Leopard’s Discord server where many previews are posted.