Confused about the title? Let’s clear things up a bit, shall we?
Back in 2014, after being acquired by Airbus, Eurocopter changed its name to Airbus Helicopters. From then on, the correct name for any helicopter manufactured by the company should be Airbus. Nonetheless, a lot of people still recognizes the name Eurocopter easier.
This particular model, the Tiger, is known as Tigre in Spain and France and John Bray (along with Timi Hietaen) decided to name it this way, possibly because the livery added is the Spanish one, with which he had brief contact at an airshow.
The Tigre is another freeware (GPL/GNU licensed – the sources shall be released when the helicopter is officially released) project which is currently under beta (yes, you can download it; just look for the link below).
The idea behind the project is to “make a very fast, manoeuvrable aerobatic helicopter. Possibly more so than anything else available in XP11 at the moment.”. John says that the Tigre is “almost a natural progression” for him “because the Gazelle and Colibri are from the same stables”.
One of the challenges – and a high priority for him – of this project is the helmet-mounted display which he indicates to be a high priority.
The 3D model is based on a GPL release by Emmanuel Baranger ("Helijah"), which has obviously helped accelerate the development project.
John was kind enough to send us a list of features he’s planning to work on prior to release and it’s a rather big and exciting one:
- Instrument panel canopies/covers: remodel and make smoother
- Helmet mounted display: add more data to the display
- 3D objects for instrument panels (mostly boxes and buttons). At the moment they are just 'normals' generated
- 3D model for the electromechanical instruments on the bottom right corner
- Multi Function Display: make switchable to other options
- Side + centre panels in cockpit
- Flight controls
- Seat + cockpit interior
- Landing gear animations
- Rotor animations (including disk graphics
- Exterior model – replace
- Engine exhaust positioning + smoke
- Radios (including GPS/FMS)
- Autopilot/ SAS
- Perspex for cockpit windows
- Glass for instruments
- PBRs
- Paint kit
- Sound files
Date of release is estimated to be June 2019.
As I mentioned before you can download it right now and give it a try, but you should bear in mind this IS a beta version and not only it’s unfinished, it still has some issues as you can see.
