Now that we are adding more planes….
This leads to my suggestion that we should expect Infinite Flight to start adding more aircraft families by creating variants of existing ones, and the obvious candidates are the 737F and the 757F.
As we've seen, adding variants isn't rocket science. All the basics are laid out and working. The main work involved is tweaking engines, weights, performance characteristics, and visuals. In the case of the freighter variants, the only additional elements would be a new cargo door, updated livery, and, possibly, new sounds if necessary. In other words, a minimal amount of effort compared to designing a new aircraft from scratch.
Infinite Flight has the 737 and the 757 already present in the sim. Thus, it would be enough to do just two things to get a good freighter variant:
* Change weights and adjust for cargo operations
* Adjust performance slightly
* Add the cargo door visually
* Update livery
There will be absolutely no need to introduce new cockpit models or aircraft systems, since the aircraft remains fundamentally unchanged aside from the cargo compartment configuration. In fact, it will take much less work compared to implementing the A39X, whose design entailed some tweaking on the modeling front too.
Surely, in reality, there are many more differences between regular passenger airliners and cargo planes, but from a standpoint of sim development, especially on Infinite Flight, this seems to be relatively easy to implement.
Moreover, cargo operations account for a huge chunk of real world aviation that doesn't receive proper attention on IF at all. Adding the 737F and 757F would give us whole another type of aircraft to fly in.
I'm interested to hear your opinion on that. Should freighters be easily implemented next? Or am I overlooking something?