Robert Randazzo from PMDG has made a new announcement concerning their long-awaited Universal Flight Tablet for Microsoft Flight Simulator, with many preview images, features, and a release date. 

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They begin with an explanation of why it took relatively long to develop, with a bit of backstory on their pre-existing regulatory Electronic Flight Bag that was available for their P3D line of products between 2016 and 2022 and the decisions that led to developing a completely new tool from scratch, with a different approach and scope.

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PMDG highlights that the Universal Flight Tablet is not an EFB, as EFBs are tightly tailored toward flight planning and management tasks with a fairly limited scope. They wanted to offer more than just that this time, which other developers have also been offering and has become the market standard as of late. Thus, the different naming.

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Asobo’s SU13 removed one of their biggest limitations regarding communication with an external server, making it easier for PMDG to send data back and forth from the user’s aircraft to their server infrastructure and eliminating the need for the complex workaround method they had previously been utilizing.

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One of the things that was not previously mentioned is that their tablet will be compatible with sim-enhancement tools from either themselves or partners, meaning it will provide an ecosystem for applications that will run inside that environment. They refer to it as the “garden.” 

Upon release, which is scheduled for October 30, the application suite will be as follows:

Flight Plans/SimBrief Integration

- Importing flight plans from SimBrief.

- Download weather for the flight plan route.

- Flight plan/weather sharing between tablet/aircraft.

- Display of Operational Flight Plan.

- Display of real time METAR information (native or simplified format)

Charting:

- Navigraph Charts (Requires Navigraph Subscription)

- Georeferenced aircraft on displayed charts where appropriate.

- Flight centric chart selection/pinning of desired charts.

Performance Computation:

- T/O, Diversion, Landing computations.

- Data Import from flight plans or from the aircraft itself.

- Reduced runway length computations.

- Graphic display of displaced threshold data.

Plans for upcoming applications were already laid out, including ways to manage aircraft options, functions, and failures. 

While more features are yet to be announced, they claim to have coordinated with other developers to include access to their applications from the tablet, bringing an entirely seamless integration.

The core functionality includes data entry via keyboard or on-screen, metric/imperial units, day/night setting, and independent tablets (pilot/co-pilot). 

Their upcoming 777 will feature the tablet from the beginning, while the 737 Lineup will get the update on October 30, as previously mentioned.

The 737 lineup is available on PMDG.com or via Marketplace, with prices ranging from $34.99 to $69.99. 

Stay tuned to Threshold for more flight simulation news!

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