New Release: Pilot's Boeing B314 "The Clipper" Flying Boat

“Soon”. :joy:

Is there any news on the B314 for MSFS?

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The Boeing 314 Clipper has finally shipped from PILOT’S.

I haven’t picked it up yet, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the price is a reasonable 29.95 EUR. The P3D version was 10 euros higher recently, and was double that back in the early days.

The P3D version was a nice study-level plane with some quirks. The props look terrible in the screenshots here, but hopefully they’re better moving. Gonna pull the trigger on a purchase, I think, and will report back once I have a fly.

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Looks like it’s coming to Marketplace, from references in the documentation. Normally Marketplace is my last choice, but the installer here is annoying enough that this might the first time I wish I’d waited. (Add serial number, log into an account that is actually your Pilot’s website account but is labeled as something else, etc.) It feels very 2007.

A couple of quick flights… First of all, and to me the most important, the flight model feels good and seems to match the performance of what I’ve read in the real plane. You feel like you’re flying a heavy late 30’s flying boat. Instrumentation looks solid on first glance, but the website notes some systems are still being implemented, so if it’s the “study level” aspect you’re focused on, you might want to wait and watch reports on this. Exteriors look good, cockpit textures are good on the panels and not so great on the floor/walls. Folks who prioritize cockpit visuals are likely to have complaints, but folks who are more about the flying experience will likely find enough here to like to justify the 29.99 euro price, knowing that Pilot’s is planning to keep improving the systems, and they have a 20-ish year track record of slowly but eventually upgrading their products.

A series of water runways around the world, at places the Clippers historically operated, are included, which is a nice touch.

One quirk: Jumping in without reading the manual but just anxious to test-fly, I couldn’t get the Cape Town Clipper 314A model to unstick from the water with a 70% fuel load, though I didn’t have that issue with the regular 314 model. Then I realized that, despite starting on the water runway, the mixture was fully leaned at startup. Moved the mixture lever to full rich and had no problems reaching takeoff speed.

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thanks for your quick / initial thoughts

looks like a really neat plane. does it sound good? they indicated that they are utilizing a custom sound pack.

Audio is good. Sounds a lot like what I remember a B-17 sounded like from inside. No noticeable loops on the engines, good deep rumble, sounds adjust well. It’s a custom sound pack, but is WAV files, not Wwise. (But hey, the windows don’t open, which is the way most forum folks even check that. :slight_smile: )

I don’t know if there were Clippers that really had that hideous green throughout the cockpit, but hopefully a talented repainter can make it look more like this shot of a Pan Am Clipper circa 1939…

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Time to recreate the route from New Zealand to New York the long way home :wink:

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I see about 43 vids in Youtube about the new analog Bonanza, zero about this plane. Well done on the marketing front Pilots!

I’ll wait until it gets to the marketplace and then definitively buying it, I like the 314 a lot, those old trans-atlantic and trans-pacific routes are going to be a lot of fun flying low above the waves.

And yes, the green needs to go hopefully soon so I don’t have to fly a soviet-looking Boeing 314. Maybe there was a Clipper painted green inside irl?

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Maybe during WW2 when Clippers were pressed into military service they were painted green inside?

Did they do the full cabin this time around? If so I’m all in on this one!

having a hard time getting this thing off the water…it’s bouncing off the back of the float

Do we know when this will appear in the Marketplace?

You need to lift up the armrest and move your red mixture lever forward to 100%, that should help a great deal! :wink:

Probably within the next 4 weeks, please note that the pricing at the official PILOT’S webshop will be significantly more favourable than elsewhere.

That would depend where you live, marketplace has local pricing.

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Purchased and downloaded from the Pilots site. Extracted files, but the installer seems corrupted and fails, then the installer vanishes from the folder. Sent in a support request which has yet to be ansered. Also, the dowload is very slow. Not a good customer experience.

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The installer vanishing is likely your anti-virus kicking in and seeing it as a false positive.

I would suggest you create a new folder, place the downloaded ZIP in there, then create an AV exclusion for that new folder, then unzip and install.

The download being slow could have numerous reasons, thanks for the feedback.

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Thank you Jerome for the quick response. That was it. My AV was blocking the install. But I did have to do a reboot for the AV to actually acknowledge that it found something before removing the file in question. Now I can exlcude the folder. Loading now.

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@pby5a, looking for some fun? I have a hard time believing that’s a color photograph from 1939, but, even if it’s just a painting, maybe a colorized photo?, @Editer is correct it looks a whole lot better than the screenshots above…

That photo seems to be a modern photo taken from the flying boat museum in Ireland…