15 December 2025
A YEAR OF UPDATES
Welcome to the 2025 edition of our End of Year Round-Up! A chance for us to look back at all that we have accomplished over the past 12 months. For the next five days we will be sharing articles covering our in-house development activities, ranging from a summary of the updates we released and the continual support for our existing products to exciting updates on our in-development products.
Day One summarises what this year has been about for us – updates! We have released 34 updates across all of our in-house products in 2025 – a huge number and possibly the greatest number of updates we have ever released in a single year. We are continuing to offer equal support for all our products in both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024, which means that every product update requires a dedicated build for each simulator. In addition, our add-ons are also available on the in-game marketplaces for PC and Xbox, which also require their own dedicated builds for both simulators. That comes to a grand total of 87 unique builds released across all platforms for our in-house MSFS products – and that’s not including the post-MSFS 2024 SU4 compatibility fixes! We supplied all these builds as free updates to all Just Flight customers across all stores.
These updates range from small hotfixes to significant ‘Version 2’ upgrades, with some changelogs extending to 200 items long. As part of these updates we upgraded all our products to a ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard, meaning that all our MSFS 2024 products are now built natively within MSFS 2024 and fully compatible with this newest simulator.
We have produced a short video covering our entire ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ product range - you can view it here.
Whilst developing MSFS 2024 native versions of each of our products, our development team also spent a considerable amount of time investigating and implementing some of the brand-new features that are now possible thanks to the new core elements in MSFS 2024. All our add-ons now support the MSFS 2024 LOD system for increased FPS/performance as standard, and all our airliners now feature MSFS 2024 walkaround support. Although time has not allowed us to implement every new MSFS 2024 feature in each of our 10 MSFS products, we do now have a solid foundation that we can look at building upon in the future.
Let's take a look at our full MSFS product line and see what updates were brought to each product in 2025...
RJ Professional
The RJ was the very first product for which we released an ‘MSFS 2024 Compatible’ update, in December 2024. The aircraft was initially released a few weeks prior to the launch of MSFS 2024, so it made complete sense to make this our primary focus when MSFS 2024 arrived.
Whilst MSFS 2024 was still in its infancy, the processes involved in upgrading an MSFS 2020 aircraft to be ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ were alien to us, which is why we, like many other developers, took the decision to initially update the product to 'MSFS 2024 Compatible' status – meaning that the product had been tested in MSFS 2024 and that it functions the same as the MSFS 2020 version, but was essentially a 'port' and so did not support any of the native MSFS 2024 features.
Later in the year we gained more knowledge about the processes involved in developing ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ add-ons, and we begun the process of releasing ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ versions of all our products. In August we released RJ Professional v1.4, and also included in this update was the addition of an RJ100 QT freighter variant, direct Simbrief OFP import into the GNLU-910A FMS, and new custom cabin textures for the 25+ included liveries.
Hawk T1/A Advanced Trainer
The Hawk was our first true ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ product. As with the RJ, we initially released a ‘MSFS 2024 Compatible’ update for the Hawk, in early 2025. The timing worked as we were already working on one of our signature ‘Version 2’ updates to the product, with a sizeable changelog already in the works. The Hawk’s ‘Version 2’ update included a significantly reworked flight model, functional weapons, the Just Flight Version 3 EFB, new liveries and a raft of other bug fixes and improvements.
A further update in April included various other improvements, but most importantly upgraded the Hawk to an ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard.
Avro Vulcan B Mk.2 K2 & MRR
The Vulcan was our second ‘MSFS 2024 Compatible’ product courtesy of an update in January, and was also our second ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ product following a further update in April.
The Vulcan has always been a firm favourite of our development team, so seeing it sat on the ramp with MSFS 2024’s lighting, ray tracing and the incredible sound set really made us appreciate just how much of a step up in immersion the new simulator was going to offer.
The updates to the Vulcan have smaller changelogs than most of our products this year, reflective of how content we were with the current state of the aircraft, but we still managed to pack in a significant selection of new features and improvements, such as a new EFB, upgraded GPS and additional quality-of-life enhancements.
PA-28R Arrow III, PA-28R Turbo Arrow III/IV and PA-28-161 Warrior II
After spending the early months of 2025 working on our high-speed, high-altitude aircraft, we decided to slow things down a little and spend some time back in the world of General Aviation.
We’re especially wedded to our PA-28 range; they were the first add-ons we released for MSFS 2020 back in 2021, and it just so happened that they were also the first products where we skipped the ‘MSFS 2024 Compatible’ build stage and jumped straight to ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ builds. After releasing our first ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ updates for the Hawk and Vulcan, we now had the knowledge and experience to allow us to start investigating what new MSFS 2024-specific features we could include to embellish our aircraft.
Despite their age, our PA-28 aircraft remain highly relevant in the competitive world of MSFS General Aviation aircraft, thanks to our development team's frequent updates. This year we released five updates for each of our PA-28s, with the updates including such features as heavily reworked flight models, new EFBs, interactive paper charts, performance optimisations and other bug fixes and improvements, along with upgrading each aircraft to ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard, of course.
We are immensely pleased to have been able to provide five updates to each of our oldest products so long after their initial release - so much so that we produced a video showing off our PA-28 fleet in MSFS 2024! You can view it
here.
There will, of course, inevitably come a time when we can’t support these products with updates forever, and including some of the latest and greatest flight simulator features will require a product which is specifically built to accommodate them. We'll share more news about this in the New Year.
PA-38 Tomahawk
Following closely behind the many PA-28 updates was the v1.4 update to the Tomahawk, which upgraded it directly to the ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard.
The Tomahawk is a simple aircraft to operate, which helped us upgrade it to ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard in record time, allowing us to add new features as well as tidy up a small number of outstanding bugs. Among these new features were a new EFB, improved animations, improved model components, enhanced wear and tear simulation, and an updates flight model (including ground handling). Thankfully, the flight model differences between the two simulators was minimal, so the 'Traumahawk’ is still very much capable of entering a spin in the right conditions!
FS Traffic
FS Traffic - our only in-house, non-aircraft add-on for MSFS - continues to boast the highest quality, most performance-friendly AI traffic models available in MSFS, and we were eager to bring those, as well as our offline traffic generation module and tools, to MSFS 2024. Unfortunately we were met with significant hurdles when interfacing FS Traffic with the default AI Traffic engine, with significant portions of the MSFS core traffic engine appearing to be a step backwards from even the latest versions of it in MSFS 2020.
After much investigating and numerous work-arounds, we were able to release an ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ version of FS Traffic in June, which not only upgraded the entire model library to a MSFS 2024 native standard, but also included a range of additions and improvements to the Traffic Control Centre app and FS Traffic module, and added new liveries that were requested on the Just Flight community Forum. As MSFS 2024 continues to mature and evolve, the FS Traffic development team remains keen to monitor the status of the simulator’s core traffic engine and to take advantage of any improvements that may be included in future Sim Updates.
A quick note about the availability of FS Traffic on the PC and Xbox 2024 marketplaces this year: We initially uploaded FS Traffic to the MSFS 2024 marketplace 'ingestion portal' shortly after the releases of the ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ update, but unfortunately every build we upload has been perpetually stuck in the system, and we are still awaiting our first opportunity to evaluate a build of FS Traffic on the MSFS 2024 in-game marketplace. Although we are in regular contact with the marketplace team, no solution has yet been found, so we are unable to provide an estimate as to when the free ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ upgrade of FS Traffic will become available to existing users on the MSFS 2024 marketplace, or when it will become available for purchase. We are hoping for a solution soon!
The next update to FS Traffic is in active development, and will include a range of new aircraft models and liveries to bolster the already sizeable list of AI aircraft already included. We'll share more details as to exactly what this update will include in the New Year.
F28 Professional
As we begin our turn onto final approach on this ‘Year of Updates’, we closed the year by providing ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ upgrades for two of our heavy-hitting airliners. Firstly, we decided to tackle our venerable F28 Professional.
The F28's journey into MSFS 2024 began around the time of MSFS 2024's release towards the end of 2024. Throughout the release period our development team were already engrossed in an ambitious ‘Version 2’ update, with a headlining item being our fully custom-coded UNS-1 Flight Management System. This would be a toggleable option in the aircraft, allowing navigation using the UNS-1 FMS, traditional navigation with the VHF NAV and ADF radios, or via the newly located Working Title GNS430 GPS. In addition to these new navigation options, an Altitude Preselect Controller was to be added, enabling more autopilot functionality for those who wanted it, as well as improvements to all existing autopilot logic.
Additional items were added to the cockpit, including sun visors, an alternative type of passenger oxygen regulator, and new annunciators for the upgraded navigation equipment; all were toggleable via controls in the cockpit and, in some cases, were automatically fitted based on the selected livery. All these configurations meant that no two F28s you fly in the simulator would be the same – a remarkably similar experience to that of real-world F28 pilots!
The ‘Version 2’ update released as an ‘MSFS 2024 Compatible’ aircraft in March, with a v2.1 update coming later in the month. The combined changelogs for both of those updates exceed 150 unique items, which also included general bug fixes, other new features and quality-of-life additions.
Coinciding with the ‘Version 2’ update, we produced a video highlighting the rich variety of features that were added to the F28 Professional - you can view it
here.
In October we revisited the F28 for its next significant update, which involved upgrading the product to ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard and, for the first time, added Preflight Walkaround Support to one of our aircraft. We had already included fully simulated cabin controls in the initial v1.0 release of the F28 Professional, so our focus in v2.1 remained on the external interactions, including passenger, service and cargo doors, chocks and GPU.
The v2.2 update also added the much-requested direct Simbrief import functionality to the UNS-1 FMS and various other improvements, including the addition of meticulously hand-crafted cabin textures for each of the F28 liveries. We really do think that the custom cabin textures that were included in the v2.2 update are the cherry on the top of an F28-shaped cake!
146 Professional
What better way to round off our year of updates than to release the biggest update we have ever provided for one of our MSFS products.
Our plan with the 146 was to first focus on completing the F28 and RJ ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ upgrades; we would then be in the best possible position to take advantage of the optimisations we had created when developing these previous upgrades and to significantly upgrade the 146 with the latest features and improvements in the F28 Professional and RJ Professional.
We anticipated that this v2.4 update would be our biggest of the year but none of us expected the changelog to be almost 200 items long! Although bug fixes were included in the update, the focus was on adding new features and improving existing elements of the 146. All the major aircraft systems received an overhaul based on our experiences with our other airliners, particularly the RJ. The electrical, hydraulic and air-conditioning systems were just some of those which saw the most significant improvements.
We also added our latest V3 EFB to the cockpit, with a new model, redesigned interface, improvements to the boarding and refuelling simulation, new aircraft configuration options and more.
The 146 also received MSFS 2024 Preflight Walkaround mode support, custom cabin textures for each passenger livery, new realistic ‘bounce’ animations to all cockpit instrument drums, and much more. We could go on talking about every feature we added to the 146 in the v2.4 update, but we simply hope that it’s as pleasing to you as it is to us to have all three of our high-fidelity airliners upgraded to a ‘MSFS 2024 Native’ standard, and all now with a similar feature set.
If you would like to take a look at some of the features included in the v2.4 update, we published a short video which can be viewed
here.
X-Plane 12 aircraft
We'd like to highlight the fantastic work which our development partners at Thranda Design have done this year in expanding our X-Plane 12 line-up.
In March we released the
PA-28-161 Warrior II - arguably the most popular version of the PA28 family - which received a full re-texture of the interior and exterior with 8K textures for maximum clarity and resolution, additional support for the latest X-Plane 12 feature set, and also some hallmark features of Thranda Design aircraft such as a new EFB/tablet with dynamic livery support which allows you to create a livery and see it update in real-time, without ever having to exit the simulator.
In May, the Thranda Design team completed work on their most ambitious product of the year, an X-Plane 12 Native version of our
146 Professional airliner. This new aircraft saw a myriad of improvements from the X-Plane 11 version and added support for new X-Plane 12 features. It was also released with a new lower price, allowing more people than ever to experience the quirky operations of the 146.
In October, the next of our native X-Plane 12 PA-28 range was released: the
PA-28-181 Archer III. Like the earlier Warrior II release, the Archer III also received a significant upgrade compared to its X-Plane 11 predecessor, with upgraded artwork, X-Plane 12-specific features and the popular Thranda Design EFB/tablet and dynamic liveries.
If you've made it this far, thank you for your interest and for taking the time to read the complete article! It has been an incredibly productive year for our in-house development team, providing these extensive upgrades to all of our MSFS products in both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024.
Although it has not gone unnoticed that we have not provided you with a brand-new add-on this year, we hope these extensive free upgrades have increased your enjoyment of our products. Please stay tuned for tomorrow’s instalment of our end of year round-up - we promise it won't be quite as lengthy as this one!