We've already got the ATR as Expert Series 01, but when it comes to the pending Expert Series 02 Praetor, well, to borrow a tagline, "This isn't your father's Embraer"

Matt Nischan opened his segment with this astounding tidbit, "We're treating [the Praetor addon] as a prototype for what the future of flight simulation could be." 😁!

Let me tell you, Matt reviewed just a few systems, but from his description, the Praetor could easily be at the same level of fidelity as A2A, Black Square, Leonardo, Fenix, and PMDG.

And dare I say it, he is describing systems that make the Praetor sound as sophisticated as the current ne plus ultra biz jet/airliner, the Hot Start Challenger 650 for X-Plane (and that's a $125 addon!!).

For those of you who happened to watch Matt's previous 2 hour long deep dive into the systems of the Longitude (and how it, too, is a Study Level addon), it seems like they're taking the Praetor to an even deeper level.

Just two e.g.s out of many: they're modeling airflow through the jet engines, literally front to back, down to the individual compressor stage, including all the relevant parameters. The ProLine nav system is going to have "all features", and will run over their own simulated IRL data buses/networks, etc.

This thing could be an absolute Giant Killer for the state of the art in flight sim!

In terms of release date, nothing was given, but we did see in-sim, in-flight cockpit video of the nav system, etc., and Matt said the addon is well along the development path 🙂 

Even more good news is that for Expert Series 03, FlightSim Reborn is upgrading their old FSR500 to be the Piper M600 (and yeah, it really is called a Piper now!). Now the FSR500 was/is a very good addon for MSFS 2020 and it still works well in v2024. But again, Raul explained that he's closely collaborating with Matt & Working Title to ensure the M600 will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Praetor in terms of Fidelity. 🙂 

He estimated that it will release this coming June at Flight Sim Expo 🙂 

And lastly, the poor old ATR isn't being abandoned - it has a CFD flight model and a rebuilt cockpit courtesy of Asobo, and Hartmann is hard at work to level up the fidelity.

Now, with all that good news, a few thoughts & questions occur:

• It's hard for me to believe the Praetor or M600 will sell for the same $20 that the ATR does. Because again, they're talking about including features at the level of $50-$80+ 3rd Party payware. So is it gonna be $30...or more...?
• While it's GREAT for us to have First Party addons coming at this level of fidelity, what effect might this have on 3rd Party High Fidelity addon devs...? I.e., it could really shake up the market, especially as the Expert Series continues to add additional addons.
• And finally, I'm looking at the Praetor in particular, and I can't help but think MS fully intends to go after the commercial market.

I'll tell ya, for a guy like me, a hangar with the Praetor, M600, the A2A Lancair, and a great helo like the Taog's OH-6 would probably cover EVERYTHING I "need" out of a (civ) flight sim. Good Times, indeed!

Edited April 16Apr 16 by UrgentSiesta

Yes, thanks, the Praetor needs its own thread.  There was so much data and cool charts (some of which I didn't understand haha) in that presentation.  I feel like I needed to open my late father's book from the university on fluid dynamics 🙂  He also had a really interesting (but way too in depth for my brain) book about the physics of flight.  My dad was an avid mechanical engineer who worked on a lot of interesting projects related to aviation, and naval products.  In his last years (cancer took him) we didn't see eye to eye very much but I do miss him quite a bit.  Sorry for the dovetail...

I think the Hot Start might still be a bit more in depth just from talking to some of the avionics experts who frequent the WT forums, and they have the whole FBO thing - Raul has that for his Phenom though 🙂  But yes the Praetor appears to be shaping up to be the most advanced bizjet in MSFS...  but it's hard to say if the FSR Phenom will be more in depth.. time will tell.  

From the small screenshots of the Praetor's cockpit the visual fidelity also appears to be very high end.  I really enjoy Asobo's art team for their default products.  The TBM, C700, CJ4 and 737 max are quite incredible renditions of their real world counterparts.

I only wonder who will do the sounds on the Praetor?  Hopefully they do it justice.

I was recalling the upcoming business and GA aircraft that will arrive this year (hopefully) and there are A LOT of products.  In FSX/P3D we could only dream of stunning visuals and superb systems in a bizjet addon.  I think only the Eaglesoft C750 had the best systems... visually it was behind but still a great addon.

 

10 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Yes, thanks, the Praetor needs its own thread.  There was so much data and cool charts (some of which I didn't understand haha) in that presentation.  I feel like I needed to open my late father's book from the university on fluid dynamics 🙂  He also had a really interesting (but way too in depth for my brain) book about the physics of flight.  My dad was an avid mechanical engineer who worked on a lot of interesting projects related to aviation, and naval products.  In his last years (cancer took him) we didn't see eye to eye very much but I do miss him quite a bit.  Sorry for the dovetail...

I think the Hot Start might still be a bit more in depth just from talking to some of the avionics experts who frequent the WT forums, and they have the whole FBO thing - Raul has that for his Phenom though 🙂  But yes the Praetor appears to be shaping up to be the most advanced bizjet in MSFS...  but it's hard to say if the FSR Phenom will be more in depth.. time will tell.  

From the small screenshots of the Praetor's cockpit the visual fidelity also appears to be very high end.  I really enjoy Asobo's art team for their default products.  The TBM, C700, CJ4 and 737 max are quite incredible renditions of their real world counterparts.

I only wonder who will do the sounds on the Praetor?  Hopefully they do it justice.

I was recalling the upcoming business and GA aircraft that will arrive this year (hopefully) and there are A LOT of products.  In FSX/P3D we could only dream of stunning visuals and superb systems in a bizjet addon.  I think only the Eaglesoft C750 had the best systems... visually it was behind but still a great addon.

 

Yep - it's rough when the parents pass 😞 My pops and I always got along well, but we didn't live close enough to see each other very often. And I did get to go visit him just before he passed. He was in (relatively) good shape, so we had good talks and such.

Yeah, I don't mean to throw shade at the Hot Start by any means! And I'm certainly too much an amateur to know which is "better" 🙂. My main angle is that it seems like we're gonna have a relatively inexpensive yet highly desirable addon (I assume $30-ish?) that is legit High Fidelity/"Study Level", AND playing in the same league as the Tier 1 Devs. 

I'll be very curious to see where the FSR Phenom fits into the picture. It "fits" my style since it's a fast biz jet that has the Garmin glass cockpit (yeah, I appreciate steam gauges, but still... 😉 ). These are good problems to have - I could still see myself buying BOTH. 

 

5 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

 

I'll be very curious to see where the FSR Phenom fits into the picture. It "fits" my style since it's a fast biz jet that has the Garmin glass cockpit (yeah, I appreciate steam gauges, but still... 😉 ). These are good problems to have - I could still see myself buying BOTH. 

 

Oh for sure...  I love Garmin glass but I also enjoy analog stuff (well let's say newer analog stuff haha).  Some of the best looking analog stuff seems to be in the FSW C414..  I love how they modeled that attitude indicator and HSI.  It's beautiful.  A2A and BS also do a nice job.

But yeah for bizjets - I'm all for the automation.  Even with that, a quick climbing aircraft like the Phenom is easy to get behind if you try to use BATC or something, especially on short IFR hops.

This is obviously very exciting and I’m pumped to hear they’re looking to simulate things as fine tuned to how the temperate registers before it enters the engines to after — but, if they don’t pay the same attention to the avionics, then it’ll be a bust, or bummer — kind of like the ATR is, which I’ll admit is totally acceptable and I’ve had many of fun hours on that plane, but if they’re going for “expert”, the whole plane should be flawless. 

Edited April 16Apr 16 by Bdub22

14 minutes ago, Bdub22 said:

This is obviously very exciting and I’m pumped to hear they’re looking to simulate things as fine tuned to how the temperate registers before it enters the engines to after — but, if they don’t pay the same attention to the avionics, then it’ll be a bust, or bummer — kind of like the ATR is, which I’ll admit is totally acceptable and I’ve had many of fun hours on that plane, but if they’re going for “expert”, the whole plane should be flawless. 

Nischan stated that the avionics are going to be “fully simulated” 🤙

I'm 100% reserving judgement until this is released. 'Looks promising' is as enthusiastic as I'm going to get at this stage. 

1 hour ago, St Mawgan said:

I'm 100% reserving judgement until this is released. 'Looks promising' is as enthusiastic as I'm going to get at this stage. 

Working Title has established a “pretty good” track record. 

But yes, we’ll have to see how far they take the Praetor. 

Yes @UrgentSiesta, I really share most of the enthusiasm shown at the AVSIM forums after yesterdays MS / ASOB / WT presentation.

MSFS 2024 is being so well supported that I'd dare say it's never been like that, even in the good-old memmorable times of the Aces Studios !

Blue Skies ahead !!! 

(at least something to make our eyes sparkle, given the state of affairs around our Earth 😕 )

Edited April 16Apr 16 by jcomm

According to the roadmap shown at the beginning, the Praetor release is tentatively scheduled for November. Looks like it will be worth the wait!

What I care about more is whether they actually deliver serious systems depth without turning into a workflow fight every flight. For IFR I’m already pretty settled with the PMDG 737 and FShud for offline ATC, so for me the interesting part is whether these Expert Series aircraft will feel genuinely complete in normal use, not just look impressive on a feature list. If they get the systems depth right and keep the day to day flow clean, that’s the part that matters.

11 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Nischan stated that the avionics are going to be “fully simulated” 🤙

Well that’s awesome news! 

"It will be the most advanced and detailed plane in MSFS, if not in all of flight simulation"

                          -Matt Nishan

 

Coming from the same guy who said the same thing about the default Garmin units and stood on business. Can't wait for November!

Now might be a good time for me to find out what a Praeter is....... 😄

[EDIT:  Ooooh, nice! A biz jet!  There was me thinking it was going to be some 1960s military thing].
 

Edited April 16Apr 16 by JYW

14 minutes ago, JYW said:

Now might be a good time for me to find out what a Praeter is....... 😄

[EDIT:  Ooooh, nice! A biz jet!  There was me thinking it was going to be some 1960s military thing].
 

I forgot to add to my OP 😁👍