When Rhodiumcode first surfaced a few weeks ago with a new A350 announcement and a very dark screenshot, the reaction from the community was a mix of excitement and cautious curiosity. A new Airbus for MSFS, from a studio nobody had heard of, built over three years in relative silence? It raised more questions than it answered. Now, with their first proper developer update posted to Discord, Michael and the team have started filling in some of those blanks.
The developer doesn’t dress things up: there’s a lot of work still ahead, the exterior is behind schedule, the cabin is at zero, and there are no sounds worth mentioning yet. But what the team does have, after three years of building from the ground up, is a systems architecture they clearly believe in, and a cockpit that’s close to finished.
Systems built from the ground up
The majority of those three years, Michael says, went into the aircraft’s systems, avionics, and flight model. The autopilot and fly-by-wire have been built from scratch, and a strong emphasis has been placed on stability, making sure the add-on won’t crash mid-flight as systems interact with each other. For a complex airliner, that’s not a trivial thing to get right, and it’s encouraging that it was the first priority rather than an afterthought.
The cockpit is the strongest part
The cockpit screenshot shared alongside the update shows a flight deck built to a high standard. The FCU area shows the characteristic Airbus layout, with EFIS panels and AP controls. The lower panel reveals what appears to be a functioning ECAM system, with door and oxygen status displayed, alongside an active navigation display showing taxiway geometry. The right side of the panel shows the OIS, the onboard information system unique to the A350.
The second screenshot gives a close-up ground-level look at the main landing gear, with the characteristic four-wheel bogies looking well modeled and textured.
Where things stand
On the exterior, the team says the focus so far has been on the harder structural problems: landing gear rigging and animation, wing flex, control surfaces, and overall sizing. But Michael is open that there’s plenty of exterior work still ahead.
The cabin hasn’t been started. The windows in the trailer are blacked out as a result, something Michael addressed directly after spotting community comments hoping otherwise. Sound design is also listed as a major area of work still to come, and the team is actively looking for collaborators on that front.
On platform: the A350 is currently running in MSFS 2020, simply because that’s what existed when development started in April 2023. MSFS 2024 support is planned before beta testing begins. The aircraft will be the A350-900 with the new-style winglets, and it will be payware. No pricing or timeline has been shared.
A project worth watching
We covered Rhodiumcode’s initial announcement when they first surfaced earlier this month, and noted at the time that the studio’s refusal to make promises was an encouraging sign. This first dev update reinforces that impression. The honesty about what isn’t done yet is harder to write than a polished promotional piece, and it speaks to a team more focused on delivery than hype.
The iniBuilds A350 remains the current option for widebody flying on the type in MSFS, and it’s a solid one. But there’s clearly an appetite in the community for an alternative, and Rhodiumcode is making a case, cautiously but steadily, that they’re building one.
The premiere trailer is still scheduled for May 3rd.
