That’s exactly what the folks at Swisscreations did: they developed a pack that give us a huge (HUGE!) amount of customizable cosmetic changes and the more recent AS350B3e. All on top of the existing AS350B3.
Once you install this pack (more about this later down the road), you’ll get another version of the AS350 (the beforementioned B3e with a new cockpit layout) and 3 new items on the Plugins menu: cargo, interior and exterior.
These menu items will give you access to 3 sub-items where you will find a plethora of custom changes you can do to your helicopter. The list is simply huge and you can see the menu items below.
You can add anything from several versions of mirrors, baskets, seats, people, cargo, cockpit versions, you name it. Two of the probably more interesting options is the ability to change the pilot’s door with a full-glass door or change the window with a bubble window or add a window to the floor, on the side of the pilot!
Everything in the cargo menu affects the payload and weight so be careful with what you add!
You can see the full glass door on the screenshots below.
There are 4 versions of the floor window. You can see one of them on the screenshots below.
The amount of combinations you can do is very big and you’ll have a hard time finding another AS350 like yours if you really dig into all the small details.
I tried a lot of different combinations and ended up building several nice combinations. The only problem is to choose from so many options!
Issues
There are some small issues that you should know about.
This version was developed for the latest public DreamFoil AS350 which is 2.1 and only works perfectly on X-Plane 10. It does work in X-Plane 11 but it has some issues with the skids, as you can see on the image below.
I have talked to the folks at Swisscreations and DreamFoil creations and there’s a new version of the AS350 for XP11 coming along (basically an update to make it fully compatible with XP11 – don’t expect much more than this at this time) and the Swisscreations team will tweak their addon to work with this version.
Having said this, I don’t have any major issues with the addon in X-Plane 11. I just wanted to show it in its natively environment.
Is it worth it?
Yes. You will need to get this when it comes out. It’s that good and it will allow you to have an amazingly customized AS350 that will fit your style and your simming for sure.
Release date
The Swisscreations AS350 Expansion Pack should be out in a couple of days (perhaps a bit more). Stay tuned!
