Taylorcraft BC-12D: Our Love Letter to MSFS 2020
Information, Features, Previews and Pricing of our Grand Finale
Hello everyone, Brandon Yaeger here, founder of Got Friends.
Today, I want to take you on a journey. Not just into our next aircraft, but through the closing chapter of an era that changed our lives forever.
Five years ago, on this very day, Got Friends began its journey in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Four friends and five years of passion, risk, growth, trial and error, and chasing ideas that often felt bigger than ourselves. Through every step of that journey, you were there.
In the beginning, we were just having fun, throwing out uncanny aircraft and chasing the kinds of ideas that made us laugh as much as they made us curious. It was raw, experimental, and honestly just exciting to see what we could get away with. But then the Wilga happened. That was the moment things started to shift. What began as passion and chaos started turning into something real. The support, the response, the energy from the community, it all hit differently. That was when we realized this was becoming more than just a few friends making strange little airplanes for fun. It was becoming Got Friends.
This community gave our work meaning. Your support gave us fuel. Your screenshots, stories, group flights, laughter, excitement, feedback, and videos all became part of who we are. You did not just support our products. You helped build Got Friends.
To us, this was never just about airplanes. It was never just about code, art, or sound. It was about feeling. It was about adventure. It was about those unforgettable moments in the sky, the quiet landings, the rough gravel bars, the shared flights, the late nights in Discord, and the little moments that remind us why we fell in love with flight simulation in the first place.
We have always said we are simmers first, developers second, and we have always meant it. We have lived this with you, flown with you, laughed with you, and dreamed with you. So before anything else, thank you. Thank you for five years of trust, five years of friendship, and five years of allowing our young team to become part of something so much bigger than ourselves.
But every journey reaches a horizon, and today, we are here to share ours… The Taylorcraft BC-12D will be Got Friends’ final add-on for MSFS 2020.
That is not something we say lightly. MSFS 2020 was not just a platform to us. It was our proving ground. It was where Got Friends found its wings. It was where our ideas became real, and where our team had the chance to grow into what we are today. We owe this chapter everything.
But as we look ahead, we can feel the future calling. MSFS 2024 opens doors that push directly into the heart of who we are as creators. New technology, new systems, new possibilities, and new boundaries waiting to be broken. We are not going to pretend the road has been smooth. It has been challenging, frustrating, and at times uncertain. But if there is one thing you should know about Got Friends, it is that we are obsessed with pushing limits. We always have been.
To keep doing that, and to keep building with the freedom and ambition that drives this team, we know it is time to fully embrace what comes next. Still, we are not leaving MSFS 2020 quietly, and we are not leaving without one final love letter to the simulator that gave us our start.
The Taylorcraft is that love letter.
This is not just another aircraft. It is our final push into the limits of MSFS 2020, built with heart, gratitude, and everything we have learned over the last five years. As we near the end of beta, we are proud to say the Taylorcraft is approaching final. From there, our team will transition fully into MSFS 2024, while preparing to bring her to both simulators as a native release for each platform they support.
This aircraft represents some of the best work our team has ever done. Our best 3D modeling, our best sound work, our best flight dynamics, and our best coding. But more than any feature list, the Taylorcraft represents something deeper. It represents who we became during this era. It represents the standard we now hold ourselves to. And it stands as our final salute to the sim that made Got Friends possible.
So come with me on one final flight through the world of MSFS 2020. One final chapter before the next begins. One final aircraft built to honor everything this journey has meant.
This is Got Friends’ next add-on, and our final MSFS 2020 aircraft… The Taylorcraft BC-12D.
We were first in contact with Heavenbound Aviation while bringing our last aircraft, the Aeroprakt A-32 Vixxen, to Microsoft Flight Simulator. Through that partnership and close collaboration, we came to understand more of their history, their philosophy, and the way they train. Their students begin on a classic Taylorcraft, and that immediately resonated with us. We fell in love with the purity of that approach to pilot training. It is raw, fundamental, and built around proving yourself from the ground up, which felt deeply aligned with the spirit of Got Friends.
After many conversations and long nights, we made the decision to take a leap of faith and bring the Taylorcraft to life in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
During development, we supplemented our work with additional reference material from a private party within our community. That external reference aircraft, unrelated to Heavenbound Aviation or their fleet, was later lost in an accident. Moments like that are a reminder of how real these aircraft and the people behind them are, and they only reinforced our commitment to honoring them properly in the sim.
We are incredibly grateful that the pilots survived the crash, and that we had already gathered hundreds of reference photos and valuable material beforehand. Even so, the loss left us short-handed at a critical point in development. So we did what we do best. We turned back to the community. Before long, more Taylorcraft pilots from within our own circles stepped in to help, and just like that, the project found its wings again. Work resumed, and the journey continued.
Thousands of hours later, we are finally nearing the end of this recreation. As many of you already know, we have poured a huge amount of experimentation into this project. One of the biggest milestones along the way was the development of a new technology we call Reactive Motion. We fully coded a physics engine within MSFS that allows us to attach various aircraft parts to a custom motion layer, opening the door to behavior and interactions far beyond what was previously possible. If you would like to learn more about Reactive Motion and see it “in motion”, you can find additional information at the link below.
Today, we are proud to introduce another new technology that will become a Got Friends standard moving forward.
We call it Craft Pad.
Craft Pad is a fully universal system built to support any clipboard, notebook, or tablet-style interface across any aircraft. We first began laying the foundation for this idea in our LX Family Suite, which debuted in the AS 33 Me, but from the beginning, we knew this was something that needed to grow far beyond gliders.
Craft Pad gives users the ability to fully customize their aircraft around their own needs and preferences. In the Taylorcraft, that means more than 65+ customizable options spanning realism features, cockpit additions, dashboard customization, and of course, persistent settings that carry from flight to flight. We are extremely excited to unveil this tech and we can’t wait for you all to “Tailor your Taylor” to your needs.
Craft Pad will serve as the central hub of your new Taylorcraft, and we have designed it in a way that makes future implementation across other aircraft just as seamless. In many ways, this technology is only the beginning. It will also become the core foundation of our upcoming SuperGrravel (SuperCub), opening the door to hundreds of options ranging from interior and exterior customization to deeper aircraft configuration than ever before.
When Craft Pad is combined with MSFS 2024’s modular workflow, the possibilities become incredibly exciting. Want to swap your engine during preflight? Done. Want to completely change the layout and character of the dashboard? Easy. Want to replace the wings with something more aggressive and capable in the STOL environment? Absolutely. The flexibility offered by MSFS 2024 opens doors we simply could not ignore, and it became one of the biggest reasons for our team to move beyond the old simulator and fully embrace the new one.
And now, it is time to reveal some of the incredible features that make the Taylorcraft so special.
- Fully simulated hand-crank propeller physics featuring engine cylinder compression, drag resistance, authentic windmill starting, and optional quick-start methods.
- An authentic custom-designed soundpack that brings both the Continental A-65 and A-85 to life. Twoseventyinc has poured hundreds of hours into this soundpack and we think it will rival some of our best aircraft including the Wilga and F4F Wildcat.
- Two fully realized engine options, allowing you to fly with either 65 or 85 horsepower.
- Four unique variants, including Standard, Bush, Skis, and Floats.
- Reactive Motion physics brought to life across a wide range of components, including control surfaces, doors, engine elements, handles, landing gear, cockpit controls, and even fun extras like fuzzy dice.
- Craft Pad with over 65+ options, allowing you to truly make your Taylorcraft your own!
- Extensive realism features, including primer simulation, carb heat simulation, propeller crash simulation, fuel sloshing, camera physics, headphone simulation, and smoke generation.
- An enormous range of gauge and avionics options, including standard flight instruments, supporting gauges, an AOA indicator, GNS 430 by Working Title, GTN 650 by PMS50, GTN 650Xi by TDS, vintage radio, KAP 140 autopilot, ADF, transponder, and a tablet/EFB with Aera navigation and MSFS 2024 EFB support, plus more.
- A variety of extras to personalize your aircraft, including cargo options, a lantern, wing loads, a propeller spinner, and plenty of other fun goodies.
- Variant-specific features include custom float physics, water anchoring, paddle simulation, snow and ice behavior with skis, and ground-adjustable propeller pitch for the bush boys.
As we bring this chapter to a close, we just want to say thank you once again. Thank you for flying with us, supporting us, believing in us, and helping shape Got Friends into what it is today. The Taylorcraft is more than just our next release. It is a reflection of five years of passion, growth, risk, experimentation, and the incredible community that made all of it possible. It is our final love letter to MSFS 2020, and at the same time, the beginning of a bold new chapter for our team.
The Taylorcraft will be available in both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024, with a native MSFS 2024 version included in your purchase. When it arrives, the aircraft will be priced at $24.99 for both PC and Xbox with a free upgrade for Marketplace owners. We plan on distributing on the Got Friends Website, Contrail and the In-Game Marketplace.
From all of us at Got Friends, thank you for being part of this journey. We are incredibly proud of what this aircraft represents, and even more excited for what lies ahead. We hope the Taylorcraft earns a place in your hangar, and more importantly, in the memories you will make with it.