After the popular release of the 146 Professional Version 2 update last week, we now take a look at how the next iteration of our regional jet family is progressing, the RJ Professional. Go grab a brew from the ‘study-level’ coffeemaker, there is a lot to cover.
It’s been a few months since we last shared an in-development update on the RJ, but that’s not because we haven’t been working on it, quite the opposite in fact. It just so happens that a lot of the work that has been ongoing is coding related, and therefore, doesn’t lend itself very well to screenshots. Now is a good time to provide a summary of where we are with the RJ and to share some insight into the work that is currently ongoing.
We’ll start with the passenger cabins. Thanks to the similarities between the 146 and RJ fuselage dimensions, we have already integrated the 146s passenger cabins into each of the RJ variants. At a minimum, these cabins will include the same feature set as those in the 146 Professional V2 update, with some changes being made to reflect the differences between the cabins in the real aircraft. One of the areas that differs between the two aircraft is the forward vestibule attendant panel, which in the RJ, has the addition of bright/dim switches for the cabin lighting which also necessitates a reshuffle of some of the other controls on that panel. We want to ensure these little difference between the 146 and RJ cabins are modelled, as they all help show the wider picture of how the real-world 146 was modernised and improved over time, and eventually transitioned into the RJ. These additional features in the passenger cabins are still in-development so we aren’t ready to share any screenshots just yet, but we will share more information on the RJ’s passenger cabins as development progresses.
Other features from the 146 Professional will also be making a return in the RJ Professional. This means the RJ Professional will release with a feature set including, but not limited to: automatic cabin crew simulation, boarding simulation, failures, paper charts and checklists, state saving, Simbrief integration, and Navigraph charts support. We developed a lot of these features to be modular so it allows us to integrate them into other aircraft with relative ease, and that has certainly worked well here. All of these features, plus some additional ones that we haven’t announced yet, will make the RJ Professional our most feature rich aircraft yet!
Meanwhile in the cockpit, significant progress has been made on the RJs systems. Although some of the systems may look similar to those in the 146, there are quite a lot of differences in how they operate. Systems such as pressurisation which were previously semi-automatic in the 146, are now automatic in the RJ, and although a lot of the pressurisation systems code could be ported across directly from the 146 to RJ, we want to continue our trend of pushing ourselves that little bit further with each release, so pressurisation is one of several systems that has been completely recoded from the ground up.
In the last few weeks, our systems coders and flight model developer have been working in unison to simulate the FADEC system, a modern system that we at Just Flight haven’t had to look into for a very long time! The FADEC system provides the RJ with better fuel economy, increased engine reliability, improved engine performance and also allows the RJ to be fitted with an autothrottle system.
Systems-wise, the majority of the RJ’s systems are very close to completion from a coding perspective, and we are getting close to having a build where we can fly fully simulated flights and then start receiving the ever valuable feedback from our QA and testing teams. Some of the final big ticket items on our ‘to-do’ list revolve around the aircraft’s navigation systems, and first and foremost, the integration of the GNLU-910A FMS with the aircraft’s autopilot. This integration is ongoing with our systems coders and FMS coder working together to make sure the integration is as seamless as possible. Once the FMS has been fully integrated, we can then begin work on fine tuning the LNAV and VNAV autopilot modes, the latter being another modern system that is new to us!
To briefly touch on the sound set, the critically acclaimed sound set of our 146 Professional will be making a return and will serve as the foundation for which the additional RJ-specific sounds will be built upon. The sound set in the 146 Professional was already one of our most highly regarded sound sets in MSFS (second only to our Avro Vulcan, of course…) so we have no doubt the RJ will live up to the high expectations set.
Finally, one area that has continued to see progress in the last few months is the liveries. We have almost 30 high quality liveries created across the three RJ variants, ranging from some of the oldest operators of the RJ’s, through to some of the type’s present day operators, as well test aircraft, and even some special liveries. One special livery that is synonymous with the RJ, is the Swiss ‘Shopping Paradise Zurich Airport’ livery, which has been lovingly created by community user ‘SeventhMoon’ for the RJ100 variant. We have recently updated the RJ Professional’s product page with a list of liveries that have already been created, and the list can be viewed by expanding the ‘Detailed Description’ box above.
Well we hope your coffee hasn’t gone cold after reading all that! Lots of work continues in the background with the RJ, despite not being able to show suitable screenshots on a regular basis. We hope you are as excited as we are to see the RJ approach the end of its development, and we can’t wait to start showing off some of the RJ’s systems in greater detail. Stay tuned!
