The developer of the long-existing freeware Let L-410 Turbolet for X-Plane has released a new status update in the past week, promising new textures, animations and more.

Addressing the textures first, the developer showcased the work of Andrei Nastasa, the new 3D and texture artist who recently came onboard to refresh the exterior look of the Turbolet, according to Misu, the developer, Nastasa "re-did all the external textures and made it look exceptionally realistic! Just have a look at these renders!"

Animations were the next on the agenda, with the developer explaining a new workflow for the animating process "After I got the updated textures, I jumped in to animate all the moving parts. I did the previous animations in Blender 2.49 since then, much has changed."

"Currently, I’m using Blender 2.81 with the latest beta of the XPlane2Blender script. It is so much simpler - That’s why I could finish all the animations just in a few days and I was working only in the evenings!"

Misu explains that the gear animation is one of the most complex of all, with the wheel cover being directly connected to the rotation of the gear, thus a number of rods and hinges connect to enable the system to work. The new landing gear animation is viewable below:

An animated pilot model has also been added in this update, with the developer taking cues from Digital Combat Simulator to make the user feel more like they're flying the aircraft.

Lastly for the new additions, the addition of new wingtip fuel tanks and a weight & balance system to manage items such as the centre of gravity. Regarding the new fuel tanks, 200L of extra fuel is available in each tip, lending itself to longer cargo routes according to the developer. The new weight and balance system comes with two custom X-Plane menu panels, aptly named "Weight and Balance" and "Centre of Gravity", allowing for various aspects to be adjusted as needed.

Speaking to Threshold about a possible window for release, he says there's still a lot of work to do before the release of V2.

You can download the current version of the Let L-410 Turbolet from the developer's website.