Pure MSFS is boring for me. I would fly it for a day or two and that it. However, I found out about NeoFly and IVAO in time. High entry threshold to IVAO is even interesting in its own way, as it is a hardcore chain of quests for a person who is absolutely not familiar with civil aviation. However, a more interesting addon is NeoFly, as It gives you goals and progression. When I have a few hours for a uninterrupted session, I take my XCub and happily transfer 200-600-1000 pounds of cargo from one village to another.
But then I look at the next planes and there are only two models that I would like to fly with cargo, not just people, when I earn money to buy them. Even so, I still know that behind me are seats of varying degrees of comfort and luxury, not pallets of bottles, bags of fruit, or boxes of stuff. Of course, I will fly with passengers, but not only.
There are quite a few planes that can be planned, but MSFS already has “Grand Caravan” and 747s that have cargo versions.
Hi,
I would love to have cargo paintkit permitting existing cargo variant of base aircraft like c208, a320, b787, …
And cherry on the cake, cargo interior model.
Perhaps coincidentally, with this thread being rebooted and with EGNX, a major UK freight airport, about to be given the Pyreegue treatment, I’ve been hoping for a few more cargo aircraft that would allow me to reproduce some of the arrivals and departures, as faithfully as possible.
As it stands, with a few exceptions, cargo aircraft are still rare and it would be great if more future aircraft releases could be provided with cargo variants where appropriate. Kudos to PMDG for doing their bit.
I really can’t understand the reasoning behind adding a new A320 instead of just making the FBW improvements default, do we really need a new A320? Yes we do, but one converted into a cargo freighter! And I would really like to see cargo variants of the 747 and A310 as well. There’s not a single (default) cargo freighter in the sim today.
I’ll only address the 747 part of the post, written when the sim was pretty new. Yes, there are plenty of liveries for the 747-8F, and as good as they are, they’re only skin deep. Things like Operating Empty Weight, Cargo Capacity, Maximum Zero Fuel Weight, among others, are very different in the F version than in the i version. Since the great majority of the 747 flights are cargo, and since the 747 has been the backbone of freight hauling, it’s high time to have a dedicated 8F version.
I do hope that the 747-8f is included in the industrial cargo section of FS2024. No problem with the whole range of cargo planes being present, but I think the queen of the skies has been given short shrift. Case in point, an a-320 painted in Global Freightways livery and a 747 is not. And there should have been a dedicated cargo version of the 747 is fs way before now, as the 747 hauls a miniscule percentage of passengers (sadly), but a very large percentage of the air cargo, especially long distance.
And if you’re going to have a Beluga present, there should also be a Dreamlifter.
It all comes down to the licensing. FBW a32nx is GPL3 licensed, it used to have an MIT licensed variant as well which was released in marketplace during the launch of SU5. But since contributors didn’t want MIT licensing, they reverted back to GPL3 leaving the MIT licensed branch out of date.
And MS’s marketplace policy probably restricts it from offering a GPL licensed product. Basically a bunch of legal red tape.
And GPL is pretty restrictive in terms of what you can and cannot do with a source code which is made public.
