Announcing the TFDi Design MD-11

[Asid]

Announcing the TFDi Design MD-11
Posted on May 4, 2020 by Collin Biedenkapp

This morning, we posted a (not so) cryptic tweet on our Twitter. The time has come for the announcement we mentioned. So, without further ado, I would like to announce the development of the TFDi Design MD-11.


Twitter image
 
Before the questions come in, I will answer some of the important ones here.



Project Status
No, we cannot announce a release date. With that said, we are actually announcing this project a tad earlier than we originally expected. Although progress has been solid (and relatively quick), our intent was to show the aircraft off working in-sim as the first preview. We’re still a bit out from that (although, not TOO terribly far).

We decided to do this today as recent announcements would have left the community wondering if there was going to be one in this market at all. We are happy to announce that we will be filling that gap.

We have a larger team working on this aircraft than we had on the last, as well significantly more experience, which will allow us to develop it better and faster. We will, as always, keep the community up to date on development via our official social media and our Discord.



Fidelity
Our last aircraft, the TFDi Design 717, was a fantastic learning experience for us. We intend to build on that experience to create an even deeper, richer, and more realistic simulation on the MD-11. The similarities in the systems, as well as refined processes and technologies, will allow us to create something even the most experienced MD-11 crew and enthusiasts will enjoy.



Simulation Support
As of today, our intent is to natively support Prepar3D v4 and v5 at the time of release. It is a possibility that we will create a modified version of the product to support older simulation platforms (FSX, FSX:SE, Prepar3D v1-3), but we do not want to limit the potential of the product by designing it around dated standards.

We have not yet made an official statement regarding Flight Simulator 2020. We will continue to monitor the development of this platform and will do our best to support it. We intend to develop this aircraft in a format that will allow cross-compatibility in a much more practical way.



Want to get Involved?
As some of you may remember, when we announced the TFDi Design 717, we also put out a call to all community members. This call was to help us by providing documents, videos, photos, sound clips, data, or even their personal experience and knowledge. It was thanks, largely, to this help from the community that we were able to deliver the level of accuracy that we did. Once again, we would like to put this call out. If you have any of the following, please do reach out to us to help us create the best product possible.

•   Aircraft reference documents (FCOM, FCTM, etc.)
•   Any aircraft photos (even of the most obscure items)
•   Sound clips (such as aural warnings, unique flight deck sounds, etc.)
•   Videos
•   Engine data (such as EPR charts/tables, fuel flow data, etc.)

Although we do already have a good amount of reference material, the more we have, the better we can do. We will, of course, continue to research and acquire our own reference material. Thank you, in advance, to anyone who is able to help!

To submit information, please use this form.


House Keeping

TFDi Design 717 for Prepar3D v5
This is still in progress. We have the aircraft and its associated dependencies working in V5 and will be starting formal testing soon. We appreciate your continued patience.

TrueGlass and RealLight for Prepar3D v5
To our commercial customers, we are working on this, as well. They are both operating in Prepar3D v5, but we are awaiting answers from Lockheed Martin to help us eliminate a few snags before we begin formal testing. If you are interested in testing the current iteration of the Prepar3D v5 versions, please reach out to your point of contact.

PACX
We are using the feedback we received from the community survey to develop and refine the product. We have some cool items in progress that should be ready for testing in the near future. Our intent is to wrap up a solid version 1.0 over the next 3 to 6 weeks and complete the Early Access phase of the product’s life.

smartCARS 3.X
This is something we have been alluding to for quite some time. We are working on a few potential directions we can take the development to create the best possible product for our customers and their pilots. There will be more announcements and development updates relating specifically to smartCARS 3.X as they become available.

Closing
Well, that about sums up our current status. We do intend to be more active in our Discord and on our social media regarding development updates for all products. A huge part of what makes us who we are, as a company, is our presence in the community and we intend to continue developing that relationship over the coming months.
Thank you all for your support and for reading. We’re looking forward to embarking on this journey together!

[Beef]

You beat me to it, Asid! I'm looking forward to this...almost as much as Rotatesim' s MD-11 for XP11.

[Asid]

This will also have Shared-cockpit

[Asid]

TFDi Design MD-11 Development Updates
23 JUN 2020

A group blog by TFDi Design

MD-11 Updates

Josh - TFDI Design:

First of all, I would like to say thank you to every person who has submitted content for the MD-11. We have been inundated with key materials that will contribute directly to the development of the aircraft.Everything is greatly appreciated. If you do have any more manuals, diagrams, photographs, or information please continue to send them in right here.

A big shoutout to @ozzman1997 for his continued hard work on the exterior model. The control surfaces are now all exported from the model and our flight dynamics programmer will soon begin his work from the amazing material that has been submitted by the community to ensure the MD-11 flies like the real deal!

For our livery painters who wish to work on new liveries for the MD-11, Ozzy has also confirmed that the windows can be configured via the alpha channel, simply by manipulating the alpha channel of the albedo map. If you are interested in learning more, this forum post is great to read:

ozzman1997 replied to a topic
May 7

3D model - allow window configuration via alpha channel

Hi TFDi team, Super excited to hear about the MD-11 announcement!  I'm excited to see what you guys bring to the fore with this one.  I'm a long time fan of your 717 and I'm sure the MD-11 will live up to the expectations. Once released I'll be sure to be doing some repaints of this beautiful bird.  I have a suggestion that some developers do not honour and affects the accuracy of the liveries based on operator - the ability to control cabin window configuration on the external model.

    ProfessorMadman By ProfessorMadman, May 5 3 replies

@ProfessorMadman I'm glad that this topic was brought up because one of my goals as a modeler is to ensure that this aircraft is as painter-friendly as possible while not making any sacrifices in texture resolution or clarity. The aircraft h

On the backend, further development is still ongoing for non-visual requirements and we can’t show these at the moment. Once this is further down the road, we intend to explain this in a little more detail for you to read through when we have more to discuss. Another big item is that we managed to get the aircraft systems working ahead of the models and textures.



With recent work from Collin, the FMC is now being worked on and the image above shows an FMC added to some user submitted images. It is important to remember that this is a work in progress, using user submitted files that allow us to make this look correct in place. This is not representative of the final product!

Although the above image only shows a small amount of functionality, the system driving it is important. We are using a system that lets us write and debug code better and easier and eliminates a lot of the bottlenecks we usually encounter. This will become a testbed for our systems code and allow us to develop and test the aircraft while Ozzy is creating the visual elements.

A short note from @RogueShadow, one of the MD-11 Developers:

    "One problem that we’ve always had with developing for a simulator is how we reload the aircraft to see our new changes in the code. Basically, the process to reload an aircraft in FSX/P3D is to switch to another aircraft so our code isn’t in use, we compile our code to a .DLL, copy that to the Panels folder, and then switch back into that aircraft (and in FSX, click through the dialog asking if we want to run the external DLL every time!) Doing this upwards of 50 times in a day slowly becomes painstaking and causes headaches! In a previous blog post on our website, we highlighted how we used our in-house tool, D2D Studio, to reduce the amount of times we have to reload the aircraft. This time, we managed to get the entire aircraft systems and gauge rendering to run outside of the simulator, completely independent of FSX/P3D. This allows us to edit and code our systems on the fly without even having to touch any simulators, vastly improving the time spent developing the product. This system will let us get the MD-11 to you  much sooner!

    That being said, the development of the TFDi Design MD-11 is now firmly underway and a lot of progress is being made every day. Our team is spending a lot of time to get this project into your hands and in the virtual skies of the world."

To Summarise

The aircraft has a lot of work being done but we are still unable to provide a release date, or even an estimate. We hope that regular development updates that we release will allow you to see what is being done on the aircraft. Understandably, these will slow down as in depth code writing begins to pick up, as we would be unable to share that! That being said, we hope to supplement these updates with developer streams on Twitch so you can see the work that is being done when it gets to the finer details!

Thank you, and have a great week!

- Josh

[Asid]

[27JULY20] Development Updates



turbofandude:

Hello everyone, It's been a very busy few weeks! Over the last few weeks, we've released a moderately sized update for PACX (as it is nearly to version 1.0), we fixed a small snag in the TFDi Design 717's navigation display, and of course, have been hard at work on the TFDi Design MD-11. I've included some new renders and information from a few of the developers on the project.

 
To start, I'll quote @Ricardo Ramos, the systems programmer for this project.

Electrical system development is progressing fast: buses, generators, relays, switches, loads and overall interconnection mesh were coded individually and now are being integrated to work together. Buses share loads and sources when interconnected. Transformer-rectifiers and inverters were created with efficiency coefficients so when a load is present in a DC bus, the corresponding AC bus will be loaded proportionally to the transformation ratio and efficiency. Generators also share loads when interconnected. The overhead indicators were already added. Buttons event handling are coming next. With all parts working together, the logic for switching relays in automatic mode will be created and integrated last.

@ozzman1997 has been doing some incredible work on the model as well. The exterior is nearing completion (still pending texturing, of course), but the cockpit has progressed immensely.





Finally, I've been working on the FMC/MCDU (and its associated sensors, computers, and systems). I don't have a screenshot to show this time, as the majority of my work has been behind the scenes. That said, here are some key points of what's been added to the system recently:

•   Triple, independent IRU simulations with simulated drift and realistic alignment behavior (for example, a fast align can be performed once the IRU has captured true north and has been previously aligned).
•   The GNS systems are implemented and have the appropriate amount of sensors and information channels to integrate in a realistic way.

•   The navigation database system has been optimized and brought into the MD-11 and is now being properly read by the FMC, including both primary and secondary databases.
The next step is beginning to code flight planning and MCDU operations. Unlike our previous aircraft, we intend to simulate all (except maintenance/third-party software) features of the MCDU, such as wind entry and RTA. Of course, we're still early on, but progress so far bodes well.
 
That's all for now and thanks for reading!

[Asid]

[25SEP2020]MD-11 Development Update
From the devs



TFDi Design MD-11
The much-anticipated aircraft is still in active development, despite the seemingly large amounts of time developing PACX. In the background, our team of modellers and programmers are hard at work getting the MD-11 ready!

Model
The model is still being worked on, despite it still being “in the hangar”! With the latest improvements, the exterior model nears completion, while the cockpit is still being worked on. As of September 14th, the centre landing gear and bay are fully complete, with the rear cargo door, 3D cabin doors and a virtual cabin have been added. The next steps for the model include some probes, lights and the APU exhaust. Once complete, the paint kit will be started and the overhead panel of the cockpit will be worked on.



FMS
The Flight Management systems have still had significant progress made on them. At the time of writing, the FMS is capable of creating a flight plan based on navigation data. SID and STAR programming is in progress, but is expected to complete relatively soon. In addition to this, the VERT REV and LAT REV pages are nearly completed and are on our internal testing software, created exclusively for the MD-11.

The FMS is a major portion of the commercial airliner experience, hence the large amount of up-front development effort being put toward it. As it continues to progress and eventually move toward completion, development on the rest of the systems will speed up even more.

Systems
In terms of electrical systems, Ricardo has been hard at work to get the emergency power logic working, as well as support for external power, smoke switches and the APU bus tie relay. Various other power systems are being worked on and the core functionality regarding power has been largely completed, and is now being specialised further.

In addition to the power logic, Ricardo has also started to work on the Hydraulic systems, including calls to the hydraulic system and the overhead panel lights and switches. Various tweaks to original logic has also been reworked to make it more functional and true-to-life.

[Asid]

[25NOV2020] SC3 and MD-11 Development Update
Jishwaah


Happy Wednesday!

MD-11
Our eagerly anticipated aircraft has also made significant progress since the last development update posted. Screenshots from the development team included in this post show an almost fully-functional FMS that is able to be interacted with our in-house software used for development. The FMS will now respond just like the real aircraft, with behaviour replicated from the real aircraft based on community-submitted videos and manuals from the aircraft.

The following video shows the ability of STARS and Approaches being used within the flight management system:




The graphic below also shows the VERT REV page and wind data entry:



This final graphic also shows the use of a custom runway as a departure airport - a feature that the 717 did not have:



Great headway is also present in the hydraulic systems with ongoing development now visualising the reversible motor pumps providing power to system #1 after the shutdown of engine #1. There is still development work required to make it as realistic as possible, but the logic is now in place for more detailed development to take place. The following image shows this logic in action.



We will soon be getting the model of the MD-11 completed and ready for use in the simulator, with the modelling team being expanded and various other pieces of the puzzle fitting together to bring together the latest aircraft from TFDi Design!

Thank you for all your support so far in our development of ongoing projects. For all of those celebrating tomorrow, we would like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving, although it may be slightly different than usual, and we look forward to bringing about new products and showing off projects in the future.

Josh

[Asid]

TFDI MD-11 Development stream
Feb 10 2021

From TFDI:

We will be doing a development stream of the MD-11 (I know! :Pog:), it will include code on the displays and the core systems of the MD-11.

We will do this at 10:00am EST (3:00pm GMT) on Saturday the 13th at: https://twitch.tv/tfdidesign. Make sure to catch us over there for the latest updates!

[Asid]

TFDi Design MD 11 Development Stream 13 Feb 2021

[Asid]

Work in progress renders direct from the developers

These were shown during the live stream (above).

[Asid]

Winter 2021 Development Update
December 30, 2021

The MD-11 has been making significant progress over the last several months as well. We can now officially announce that we have partnered with Turbine Sound Studios to create an immersive sound experience for the MD-11. More and more systems have been brought online in the last few months and functionality is getting more complex and realistic. Since the last development update, we've got the FADEC and engine computers implemented, the first part of the flight control systems and FCC working, improvements and additions to the electrical and hydraulic systems, and work has begun in the pneumatic system. The standby display is also now nearly complete, bringing another complex piece of electronics online in the cockpit.



In the visual and artwork front, huge improvements have been made. The texturing of the cockpit has started, as well as the mapping and animation of the buttons and switches.





It's worth noting that the cockpit seems VERY worn/dirty. This is an option - it's easier for us to create it at maximum wear and tear then reduce it than it is to go the other way. You will have the ability to select the level of wear and tear you'd like.

The tools we've created to help develop and test the aircraft outside of the sim have also made getting it into the sim faster, so we expect to see a lot of functionality in the cockpit very soon. The cockpit isn't the only area getting attention, though. The exterior texturing and liveries are well underway. We have a pretty solid list of liveries we want to have available at launch and we're making good progress on them.

As always, all of the images shown here are work-in-progress and not necessarily reflective of the final, refined product. If you see something that is out of place or not quite perfect, feel free to let us know, but it may be an issue we're already aware of and will fix at some point before release. We actively encourage participation via our Discord server.

One final item that we've discussed on some of our streams but haven't officially stated yet is the price point. As of now, we anticipate the product being available as a base pack and two expansions. The base pack will either be the cargo or passenger version (your choice) and the other will be available for a small upgrade. We also plan on releasing a failures package that will include a full failures menu, operations-based failures and faults, and more. As of now, the base price is expected to be $89.99 USD. The expansion packages will be priced fairly with respect to scope and significance of the work required to create them.


A Year in Review
Entry posted by turbofandude in Announcements · December 31, 2021


As we are preparing to end another year, I'd like to take a look back over what 2021 has been for us. This year was a year of learning and dedication for us. We got the opportunity to meet up face to face at FlightSimExpo for the first time since the pandemic began and it was a much-needed break from the every day routine we'd gotten used to. Spending time with each other and with the members of the community that were able to attend was definitely a highlight for me. This year, we also got the chance to grow our team, refine our processes, and set ourselves up to be the best that we can be. We've been hard at work developing and improving our products across the board in our most asynchronous and efficient manner yet. Armed with the largest and most efficient team we've had yet, we are prepared to make some impressive progress and have some exciting news for everyone who has been patiently waiting for the projects we've been working on.

Finally, as always, we are honored to be a part of this community and to be in the position we're in. The support and appreciation we've received over the last year has been humbling and we plan on continuing to impress in 2022. We look forward to getting more hands-on with some of our development progress and participating in more community events, both in person and online, as the world continues to settle into its new normal.

From all of us at TFDi Design, and Invernyx as a whole, we wish you a fun, safe, and happy, New Year.

[Asid]

Expected Pricing

The product will be offered in packages to allow you to select the exact features and options you want.

If you purchase either the cargo or passenger base pack, the other package is available for the reduced rate.

The Extended Simulation Package will include operational failures, an advanced custom failures menu, and some circuit breaker functionality.

•   Base Pack (Cargo or Passenger): $89.99 USD
•   Expansion (The One You Did Not Purchase Already): $14.99
•   Extended Simulation Package: $14.99

[Asid]

Spring 2022 Development Update
April 29 2022

From the dev:

Our MD-11 team have been working diligently in the background to bring this project forward in leaps and bounds. While we still do not have an official timeline for release and testing, just know that we are progressing at rates never even imagined during the production of the TFDi Design 717.

The art team has been hard at work on modeling and texturing. Take a look at some of the latest previews before diving into further details.

 



 

And, of course, a good update would be incomplete without some beautiful PBR wing shots.

 



 

Another exciting area we’ve started working on is the airframe variations! Work has begun on the cargo variant and the P&W engine variant. Below, we can see the cargo model taking shape and the amount of detail in the cargo area.

 



 



 



 

Below is a very much work-in-progress image of the P&W engine model.

 



 

We are continuing to work on mapping and texturing. We expect to see significant progress in these areas over the next few months. One of the most important advantages of our workflow is that the code can advance simultaneously with the visuals.

In terms of system progression, Romel from our team has successfully connected the ISIS and is a true backup - it is a fully self-contained instrument. Complete with all three statuses: self-test, alignment, and operational. As the system is entirely standalone like the real thing, this does not depend on the Primary Flight Display for any data obtained from the simulator, allowing failures of the PFD not to affect the backup displays, paving the way for future development of the failures package going forward.

 



 

Collin has been working on the autoflight system recently. We have taken what we learned from the TFDi Design 717 project and used it to build a much more robust autopilot. The added complexity of this aircraft’s automation, such as the RCWS and LSAS, makes it a challenging system to implement correctly. However, the autoflight has been able to hold the aircraft level successfully, and we have laid out the foundation of the code required for the mode logic and FMA. We expect to have an autopilot capable of at least basic flight control modes within the next few weeks.

We are also welcoming a new programmer, Pedro, to our team this week! He will be working on systems code with us to help move the project along even faster.

And in very positive news - our MD-11 repository hit 1,000 commits last week! For those of you who don’t know what that means, our team has written code for the MD-11 and submitted it to our central storage area (repository) 1,000 times!

 



 

Our goal is to start working more within the simulators as we progress from here. MSFS previews are coming, but it is easier for us to test in P3D, which is where we will begin.
Closing

As always, we appreciate your support and patience. We aren’t providing any release date estimates because our priority is quality. We’re working as fast as we can without sacrificing that quality until we’re ready to put some awe-inspiring products in your hands.

[Asid]

The TFDi Design MD-11 is officially available for pre-order!
24 June 2023



Pre-order at a reduced price of $80 and pre-load on launch day

Although we're still in active development, accepting pre-orders helps offset the cost of development and allows our developers to spend more time working in our passion-driven industry. The benefit to pre-ordering is that you'll be able to download the aircraft a week before the release, so that you can jump straight in to flying.

You will be able to pre-oder for both P3D and MSFS.

This is a pre-order and will not be available until later this year.

Find out more information at https://tfdidesign.com/md11.php

[Asid]

TFDi Design MD-11: May 2024 Development Update | Feature Complete
May 15, 2024

A short development update for the TFDi Design MD-11 talking through new features and plans going forward.