As part of their End of Year Round Up, Just Flight has shared some of the progress on the A300B4 Professional for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020/2024, with its exterior artwork nearing completion and ready for showcasing.

They have meticulously hand-placed thousands of rivets on every inch of the aircraft’s surface, with the tail area being the most obvious due to its housing of so many critical structures. Special attention has been paid to weathering, resulting in a representation of an airframe that has been in service for many years, complete with streaks of dirt, detritus, traces of rainwater, run-down panels, and more. The flight deck is no different, as they have previously shared.

Just Flight considers their A300B4 to be one of the most accurately represented wide-body airliners in any flight simulator. A bold claim, as they note, but they will let the people be the judges.

As for the remaining work on the art department, their artist is currently finishing the textures of the landing gear, wheels, and landing gear bays, before eventually focusing on the cargo hold interiors. Once that is out of the way, the artwork will be complete for the A300B4-203 variant. But the -203 isn’t the only variant modeled, so there’s still a bit more work to do: the showcased plane is actually an A300B4-103, for example. A freighter variant will also be included. With that being said, they are not ready yet to show any of the other planned variants.

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After the texturing work is complete, they will move on to livery creation for the variants at hand, and they promise to provide a large selection of top-quality work that will represent the A300B4’s diverse range of operators from every habitable continent.

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Furthermore, the developers have finally been able to share previews of the passenger cabin, modelled into a two-class layout from the 1980s, with the First Class cabin featuring 24 seats in a 2+2+2 configuration, and the economy cabin featuring 230 seats in a 2+4+2 configuration, narrowing at the rear to a 2+3+2 configuration.

In line with their other products, the cabin will feature numerous simulated elements, offering “lots to play with” during the cruise phase.

The cabin artwork is deemed ready, but there may be minor changes between what has been showcased and the final product at the time of release, most notably related to cabin lighting, as it has not yet been implemented.

The flight model is progressing decently, and the extensive data they sourced from a variety of A300B4 variants has been proven rather useful, allowing it to perform as faithfully as possible to the numbers.

The systems have now been fully coded, and the plane is getting ready to enter wider beta testing. Among the most recently completed systems, they highlight the Carousel IV-A Inertial Navigation System and the autopilot logic.

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Since they have something nearing completion, they can finally begin proper testing with their beta team, allowing them to delve deeply into the system's intricacies to cross-check their functionalities against the aircraft’s FCOM and mitigate any issues that may arise.

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Just Flight will be sharing more details earlier next year.

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