There will be no comparison from what I’ve seen of the development and from what we already know of the 2 devs. It’s definitively worth waiting for the SWS version. I believe a lot of us are doing exactly that.
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How many Tradewinds? N816TW or N809TW? N111NY?
Will obviously prefer the SWS version but have purchased the other PC12 the day it came out and am quite happy with it using it with the payware PMS50 GT750.
Was expecting SWS to take ages to get theirs out which is exactly what’s happening. Honestly I don’t think we will see the finished product before the end of this year… bit disappointing.
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… and we must not forget that the Piper M500 is around the corner.
For me, this will be a difficult decision, because I will only buy one of the two aircraft. And this time I’ll look more closely, because I bitterly regretted the immediate purchase of the “other PC-12”.
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Oh that’s going to be a tough choice. Save your pennies and get both I think they will probably both deserve it. If I had to choose only one it would have to be the PC-12 because I have experience with SWS products and they sell outside of the Marketplace. Two big plus points.
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Between the two, I would have to say the M500 looks incredible. Dare I say unmatched in the GA space until A2A releases the Comanche. Eventually, the SWS PC-12 is going to get save states and wear and tear features, but not on release. And eventually the PC-12NG will come out as a separate purchase, which will be well worth buying too for the Primus Apex system. If you are limited in purchases, I’d get the M500 now and maybe the PC-12 later when it gets additional features, or wait for the NG.
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@Sling380 You are absolutely right, both aircraft will be worth their money. And my personal experiences with SWS are exclusively very positive (Kodiak 100, RV-10).
But the PC-12 and the Piper M500 serve about the same requirements (typical privat charter aircraft), so I will only need one of them.
But knowing me, I’ll buy both anyway … my hangar is full of FOMO 
@kengou1 A2A Comanche is an instant buy for me. This bird serves my dreams in short and medium range sight-seeing.
I will have an eye on the SWS PC-12 with modern cockpit.
I think there are some notable differences between the two; the PC-12 is larger, a bit faster, and is better for grass strips/off-airport use (thinking of the highways in Australia). The M500 doesn’t have the same power or payload and some would fly it for personal use, not just for business. The difference in avionics is what deals it for me, I’ll likely end up buying both at some point.
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A better comparison to the M500 is the TBM. The M500 and TBM are much smaller airframes, more like a Lambo to PC-12’s Mercedes SLR.
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Another Weekend update!!
Let’s go straight to the point, We anticipate that the plane will be completed in about two weeks, just in time for our break. Our goal is to use that time to finalize and clean up any bugs reported by the testers and get the plane to a stage where it is release-worthy. On Friday, August 11th we will let you know if we’re happy with the plane and if so, send it to Pilatus for greenlighting.
If they approve it, we will announce a release date for the aircraft. Our target is mid-September, because we want a couple of weeks after our vacation to catch up with any fresh bugs that our testers or Pilatus might find while we are away.
The PC-12 recently got a set of engine covers to go with the pitot and AoA vane ones. The “Remove Before Flight” stripes will react to external forces. If you are parked on a slope, they will follow the gravity vector. If the wind blows strongly from the left, they will wave to the right and if there’s a gentle breeze they will wave softly.
While coming from an older build, the cabin is now fully functional. The executive cabin has realistic reading and floodlighting in place. The armrests, seats, and tray tables are usable, and even the drawers will close if you bank too much.
In the next few weeks we will share with you a video covering our visit to Fly7 earlier this year. In this trip we were able to experience the PC-12 first-hand for a week and learn the ins and outs of the aircraft!
That’s all for this week and see the full update on our discord (SimWorks Studios)
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Very interesting news, I am excited!
Time for our last update before the Summer break!
News on the aircraft are overall good. However, we are not happy enough to send it to Pilatus today as there are still some quirks that we need to address, as well as add some more of the nice little extras that we do on our planes.
To make the wait easier, we will release a development video covering our visit to Fly7 Executive Aviation in Lausanne. The video will be available on ** Aviation Lad´s YouTube channel on Friday, August 18, at 17:00GMT.**
A short checklist:
— All the aircraft systems are now complete. Unless something unforeseen is found by the testers while we are away, we expect that there will be no major problems to resolve. One major issue was that the condition lever is not working properly on Xbox, but the cause is known, and we will address it before we release the plane on the console.
— Flight model: we are still wrestling with the flaps. As we’ve said before, MSFS does not give us what we need to achieve accurate flap behavior, so we are trying to find the right balance between real and wrong.
— Avionics: Mostly done. What is left is mostly aesthetics and some minor functionality that is missing. As we’ve said before, WX/PLAN mode on the HSI and the KMD850 will be added in a patch.
— Exterior model: Done. A couple of UCDs* left to add.
— Interior model: Improving the textures, ETA week 1 of September.
— Sounds: 5-bladed version is done, 4-bladed will be completed when we come back. You will be pleased!
*UCDs: Useless but Cool Details
That’s all for this week, and we’ll be back on August 25th!!
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Looking very much forward to flying your PC-12!
I checked out your Trello development plan and spotted the “Improved Engine Simulation” as part of a high fidelity expansion pack, which sounds great! I was just wondering how long do you think it will take you after initial release to get that expansion done?
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Some concepts of the expansion pack have already been tried and shown to work. As I am the one writing the systems I don’t know how long because there are many unknowns.
The Kodiak’s engine failure feature showed us that deeper systems simulation is not for everyone and that some things don’t always work like you think they should.
The first lesson taught us to experiment with separating the PC-12 in two packages. The second to not estimate -the PC-12 is exactly 1 year late from when we intended it to release internally. The upside is that the PC-12 is a much more advanced product than the Kodiak and pushed us far more than we anticipated. In places it is as complex as building an airliner.
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Apologies if you’ve outlined this here, but have you considered an EFB/Tablet for the PC-12 or Kodiak to allow those users to turn off/reset the realism features, if so desired?
I’ve followed the Kodiak’s travails with the engine failures and have often wondered if the transparency of a setting/reset on a tablet would have made that easier for some users.
I love the Kodiak and am really looking forward to this new effort!
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Thanks for the info. I understand that these things take a LOT of time.
As for failures, I’ll take them gladly whenever they are part of a product. But I can appreciate that it might be a bit too much for people who only want to do casual flying, who might have never trained for what to do if an engine fails inflight.
What I like even better than “failures” where things randomly failing is “consequences”. Treat the engine wrong and it will punish you. Ignore icing and suffer the consequences, stuff like that. It forces you to take the operation flows seriously and check things. Not because things DO fail but because they COULD fail.
But apart from failures I look forward to what you call “improved engine simulation”, like a custom torque/fuel flow limiter. Things failing is all nice and well, but it’s a bit pointless if it doesn’t work correctly in the first place.
So I’ll take that expansion pack whenever it arrives 
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Exactly THIS! I’ve been flying for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never experienced a failure. Granted, in well maintained light ga private planes, never pushing limits, never flying beyond my abilities or in bad weather, so that has a lot to do with it. But still, what I want is exactly this, if I don’t take care of my plane, THAT’S when I want to see failures. I want to it to be able to tell if I’m mistreating the plane and that’s what causes failures. There’s no way I’m going to fly a plane 2000 hours in the sim, so it’s not likely I’ll wear a plane out. Granted, maybe some people would like the chance to purchase a plane with 100 hours TBO, but that’s not me.
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I think the success of the Comanche proves that wrong. Just my 2 cents (make it 4 with that inflation).
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That doesn’t prove anything. What about all those that didn’t buy it or have the failures off. We can enjoy aircraft in different ways. I guess the reference was to all the users that were complaining when their engines blew from firewalling the power lever. If you give them an option to have these features on or off it opens it up to a wider audience.
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I have thought of all the above and we want to keep all options open for both sides (SWS & customers). IMO the casual flyer shouldn’t have to pay a premium for the extra work required to model failures. At the same time, we should keep the prices reasonable for the hard-core people as well.
Splitting the product will probably let us satisfy both. Casual simmers will provide the sales volume to make the product “safe” financially, so that we charge less for the HiFi upgrade.
Speaking of failures, I am of the same opinion as @SmugVolcano8376. Random failures do happen, but almost everything breaks for a reason and not just luck of the draw. The Kodiak’s engine is a prototype of fatigue based failures. With the HiFi PC-12 we want to expand upon that and make things wear out based on their usage and maintenance intervals.
One of the main challenges is how to make the maintenance/repair feature accessible and real. Id hate to have to use a magic tablet that fixes the plane for you -unless I don’t have an option.
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