A household name on the ESP-platform, Leonardo, have announced their well-received McDonnell Douglas MD-80 has seen development for Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS). Only the exterior model has been brought across so far, with more in-depth aspects on pause for now.

That announcement comes with a catch, though, with the developer saying that at the current state the simulator’s SDK is at, it is not practicable for their very complex aircraft to be successfully ported across to the new platform - yet.

“Well before it's official release, we've [sic] been asked to join the MSFS2020 beta team and we've been studying and experimenting with the new simulator; but unfortunately (as you might have read from other developers), the SDK at the moment is still missing important parts for a complex addon like ours to be successfully ported over.”

The aircraft model has been successfully brought over, however, with screenshots of the model in-sim, albeit without any systems, appearing later on in the forum thread.

The developer confirmed that they’ll still be focusing on Prepar3D until MSFS can support an aircraft of their calibre. Lastly, no pricing information or a potential discount for previous users was mentioned. 

You can view the source post for this article on Leonardo’s website.