Avidyne IFD 550/540 in Black Square addons
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With the latest SU5 beta Working Title/ Asobo added SimAttachments for the IFD 550 and IFD 540 for use by aircraft developers. Previously the IFD was only available in the default Boom. Is this something you would consider adding to your aircraft when SU5 stable releases?
IRL the IFD 550/540 is a modern slide in replacement for the GNS 530 with the exact same dimensions. I have around 80 hours in airplanes with the smaller IFD 440 and from what I can tell the WT simulation of the IFD is really good. With the exception of the excellent KLN90B this is one of the only non Garmin GA GPSs in the sim so would be awesome to see developers integrate it.
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Now that SU5 has been released and the Avidyne IFDs are in the base sim. Is there any consideration to add the IFDs as an option for the existing Blacksquare aircraft? I believe they are the same size as the GNS, as they are designed to be drop-in replacements. It would really add to the avionics capabilities the BlackSquare aircraft. Would love to be able to use them in the Dukes. I really appreciate your consideration about this. Thank you for your time.
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Now that SU5 has been released and the Avidyne IFDs are in the base sim. Is there any consideration to add the IFDs as an option for the existing Blacksquare aircraft? I believe they are the same size as the GNS, as they are designed to be drop-in replacements. It would really add to the avionics capabilities the BlackSquare aircraft. Would love to be able to use them in the Dukes. I really appreciate your consideration about this. Thank you for your time.
@Heclak I just saw that documentation for the IFD series was posted recently. When I saw no mention of hot-swapping configuration, I looked elsewhere, and found a post from someone at Working Title saying that they will not not support hot-swapping with the IFD series. That's too bad, because it would obviously require substantially changing the architecture of all my aircraft to support one new piece of avionics. In order to add the IFD's, and maintain all the existing hot-swappable configurations, some of my aircraft would end up with 32 variations in the aircraft selection menu. I consider hot-swapping to be a major feature of my aircraft, so I'm obviously disappointed to hear this, but I feel worse that it artificially limits the options that I am able to supply to my users.
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That's a huge pity. I understand the challenge and rationale of both parties. The hotswap feature is great for the customization but I also understand the concern of how fragile the feature can be from WT's POV. Since the variant system is a core feature of 2024 and possibly moving forward, could there be a possibility of not necessarily changing your entire architecture at the moment and exploring the variant system just for the IFDs with a single preset or two? eg. the existing system remains but there is a preset for a fixed dual IFD setup (or plus another popular config) as a concept? 32 variants does sound like a huge pain. So the two variants for you would only be Garmin vs IFD.
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That's a huge pity. I understand the challenge and rationale of both parties. The hotswap feature is great for the customization but I also understand the concern of how fragile the feature can be from WT's POV. Since the variant system is a core feature of 2024 and possibly moving forward, could there be a possibility of not necessarily changing your entire architecture at the moment and exploring the variant system just for the IFDs with a single preset or two? eg. the existing system remains but there is a preset for a fixed dual IFD setup (or plus another popular config) as a concept? 32 variants does sound like a huge pain. So the two variants for you would only be Garmin vs IFD.
@Heclak Splitting off a single variant like that would be almost as much work as splitting them all out, so that doesn't gain me much, unfortunately. I will also add that MSFS 2024's LOD system also makes this much more difficult for developers, because I must now export at least four or five models for every one in MSFS 2020. Lastly, I will agree with you that I understand WT's decision, the same way that I would hope anyone would understand my design decisions, but at least from my perspective, hot-swapping works perfectly well with all the 3rd party avionics my aircraft support, including my own (KNS RNAV and Starship). The hot-swapping system in the GNS 530 does not allow for all the options supported by 3rd party avionics, but it still works well enough for me and my users, so it's definitely sad to see that system abandoned for these new avionics. Between my users and I, I will do my best to think of interesting places I could use the IFD's in the future, even if that's not alongside all the avionics options in my current aircraft.
