D328eco coming to FS2004

July 23, 2021

When did you last feel the thrill of taking flight? What was your destination? What was your purpose? Where do you want to go next?

Welcome to the D328eco™ -- yesterday's heritage with tomorrow's technology. Less fuel, less carbon emissions, less impact on our planet.

Taking off from Oberpfaffenhofen on a short test flight (FS2004 screenshot).

The Deutsche Aircraft D328eco is a stretched version of the original Dornier 328 regional aircraft, designed with sustainability in mind. As such, it is designed to be able to adopt sustainable fuels, while improving on its predecessor in terms of performance and economy.

It is expected to enter into service by the middle of this decade, and in the meantime, I am bringing this bird to Flight Simulator, starting with FS2004.

3-view I made using screenshots from gmax.

Development progress on FSDeveloper.

More info on the D328eco from DRA.

For FS2004

Earlier this year, I started work on this future regional airliner project out of interest, and since no one has worked on the aircraft, I decided to have a go, DESPITE the real plane ITSELF also being in development. So changes are bound to happen every now and then; the most recent of which was to the propeller--it now has six blades (much like the original 328) instead of seven as in the original models, but I'll deal with that later.

For starters, here's my modeling workflow: I first model the aircraft's parts, UV map, and texture them in Blender first (because I'm more familiar with it), then I export each part as an .obj file so that I can import them into Gmax, where I will give the parts their materials and animate certain parts, such as the landing gear, gear doors, and flaps.

Using Blender also allows me to develop for FSX, which I have done with my other project, the Canadair CL-44J, which was initially FSX-only, but much like this aircraft, I am bringing to FS9.

This is how the aircraft first looked when I exported directly as an .x file through Blender, before I added gmax to my workflow. In this one, I used official DRA renders like this one as a reference in modeling. While it looked okay in its own right, looking at pictures of the original 328, as well as this other DRA render, had me question myself.

How this image garnered over 150 upvotes on Reddit astonishes me.

So, while I was on and off with this project over a period of two months (due to the aforementioned CL-44J), I finally made some major changes to the plane. Among those is the nose section:

Progress was also being made on the cockpit, but due to a lack of close-ups from DRA, and the introduction of an updated Companion flight deck design, I've halted work on the cockpit for the time being. This was my most recent work on it.

The G5000 avionics suite is the heart of DRA's Companion, and features Synthetic Vision System (SVS) on its primary flight displays. Unfortunately, because this project is FS9-first, SVS is out of the question. Maybe after I save up for FS2020, I could bring that to life... who knows?

And with my most recent work on the exterior model being the airstairs, the door is now open to a cleaner future in aviation