Does the FSlabs A320 worth it?

[Tokitaumelie 164]

4 hours ago, tooting said:

with a  low mid end the VC graphics arent going to be the issue mate.

 

The overall proformance, ie frames and stutters will be.  Its insanely hard on the PC.  Which is unfortunate because its a dream to fly.  Just i find it fiddly right clicking on stuff and I cant use my  ai in any big airports as I run in 4k and the sim just cant handle 4k, the FSL, AI and a big airport, ie YYZ,LHR,LGW,SFO,LAX etc etc etc    The 744 and the 777 fine, the 320 no chance and ive got a 1080ti and a 8700k at 5.0

Ok, understood thanks Pete.

 

[squerble 300]

6 hours ago, regis9 said:

The BSS sounds are the icing on the cake for me.  My favourite soundpack for P3D (and it has good competition with the PMDG 747 sounds and the addon sounds available for the Q400 who's name I forget at the moment).

The BSS sounds (as someone alluded to earlier in the topic) are using FSL's sounds without authorisation, which means people - a few in this topic - have been duped into handing over money for what they already had. The product was pulled from Simmarket due to copyright infringement.

[Guest]

For tube liner immersion it is the best add on available at the moment for Children Of The Magenta Line, however, there's still a lot wrong with it and in FSX they never bothered to do what they said they were going to do with implementation of the SEC-F PLN, AOC, etc.
For me the cockpit sounds are what's not good. I'm running it in FSX.
The engine sounds on the climb are horrible - like a mini coffee grinder with zero other sounds and no atmosphere at all. (I'm spoiled I suppose by the PMDG 777)
IMHO the Project Airbus sounds are greatly superior!. I don't have the Aerosoft.

The performance - well, others have said. My VA home is LHR - one of the very worst places to be in FSX/ P3D. Even with AI at zero, and the sliders at modest, trying to hand fly a sideslip approach in for 27R landing with AS16 doing the METAR, and ORBX England on the ground, yep, it's a powerpoint show and consequently, unflyable and that very expensive Immersion Experience you shelled your hard earned out for, vanishes. Pity. It's ironic that to get the very best performance from it you have to make FSX a barren, empty world devoid of all other traffic, addon scenery, etc.

Customer service is shocking - it's like they don't care. Their focus feels like it's P3D - which is okay - but us FSX'ers are well and truly left behind with an airframe that's buggy and will not benefit from a performance boost with an update anytime at all it feels.

All that having been said. If you want something to fly the line with, be reasonable about what airspace you fly and what airports you encounter (keep it all easy on the frames) it is worth every penny of the cost. In fact, it's mind blowing.
Buy it.

[Julkensen 47]

14 minutes ago, ganter said:

Customer service is shocking - it's like they don't care. Their focus feels like it's P3D - which is okay - but us FSX'ers are well and truly left behind with an airframe that's buggy and will not benefit from a performance boost with an update anytime at all it feels.

 

It has been cleary said  by the FSL team since the release of P3D V4 that they would first focus on the  64bit version and then when they have a stable version of that,  port back some of the  64bit features back to FSX. 

Andrew said that the next update for  v4 was imminent and one of their beta tester said yesterday that after this release is out they would start work on the FSX version.

You knew what you were in for when you decided to stick with fsx as fslabs as been very upfront  about this, and if you complain about performance you can also blame yourself for your decision to stick with fsx 

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, 238932 said:

You knew what you were in for when you decided to stick with fsx as fslabs as been very upfront  about this, and if you complain about performance you can also blame yourself for your decision to stick with fsx 

Don't have a go at me mate.

The bloke asks whether it's worth it. I'm just saying how it's been for me.

[Holdit 551]

14 minutes ago, ganter said:

Don't have a go at me mate.

The bloke asks whether it's worth it. I'm just saying how it's been for me.

 

31 minutes ago, 238932 said:

You knew what you were in for when you decided to stick with fsx as fslabs as been very upfront  about this, and if you complain about performance you can also blame yourself for your decision to stick with fsx 

To be fair, I'd say it's more to do with running FTX England and the A320 at the same time, than it is with FSX. I'm running FSX:SE with FTX Global textures, freeware airports and I'm getting a 28+ FPS consistently. This is with default FSX traffic at about 15% airliners and 10% GA.  I don't think FSL ever made any secret of the fact that visual expectations would need to be scaled back pretty drastically in order to run the A320.  I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it runs on my i5 (OC to 4.1) and GTX1060. I'm a lot happier than the P3D v4 users seem to be.

[cyyzrwy24 127]

19 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

I still don't understand when people say the VC graphics are so bad.  Can you elaborate out of curiosity?  I you running the high resolution VC or did you install the lower ones?  I personally think they are great compared to anything else I have seen out there.

 

Graphics are, for lack of better words really terrible and I complained from FSX release. I run same set up for everything, on PMDG everything is clear from any position, on FSL I am unable to read neither ND or PFD, MCP with same set-up. Therefore resolution you have on VC doesn't have anything to do if you run same thing for both products. It is simply bad......Turns me off. Of course FSL people would argue how that is improved and perhaps not important or even worse, how good it is and it is NOT. Bird is nice, flies nice, don't like few things (taxiing, rudder use, etc),  but it doesn't bothers me, but graphic are bad.

[cyyzrwy24 127]

7 hours ago, ganter said:

Customer service is shocking

:)

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

I like it although I have to question whether ground effect is modelled? In the PMDG 737 it's very easy to float it on landing. The FSlabs A320 if I retard the throttles more than a fraction it seems to drop like a brick.

Also I find it seems to slow down having touched down a little bit too quickly. On the whole though it's a great add-on.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

I like it although I have to question whether ground effect is modelled? In the PMDG 737 it's very easy to float it on landing. The FSlabs A320 if I retard the throttles more than a fraction it seems to drop like a brick.

Also I find it seems to slow down having touched down a little bit too quickly. On the whole though it's a great add-on.

The B738 will float far more (it's a slippery little sucker) than the A320. They land differently, the only similarity being VLS speeds.

I had an ex Boeing pilot tell me that the trick to landing an A320 is leaving the flare until you scare yourself. Tongue in cheek but true. Flaring too high always leads to a bad landing as you run out of energy and drop out of the sky or push the aircraft onto the runway. 

My landing technique A320 series is check sensible ROD into the last 50' feet, don't dive towards the runway OR get shy of the ground! I only start the flare at 20' radalt. After you start the flare, smoothly reduce power to idle during the flare. 'Retard' is a reminder, not an instruction.

If you have a high ROD into the flare, flare a bit higher. If you have a strong headwind and low ROD or very light you might need to flare a bit later.

As well as flaring at the right height, the correct speed is important. Especially on the A320 make sure Vapp is at least 5 kts above the VLS on your PFD once configured. 

I was initially taught 30' for the flare, I found it very hard to land. The chief pilot told me "Forget everything you have been taught. Flare at 20', bring thrust to idle at 10." From then on it clicked for me.

It seems to me that FSL have modelled this quite well. Are you getting the last 100-150 feet properly straight before touch down? Because if you're coming in hot it will spit you out.

 

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

57 minutes ago, ganter said:

The B738 will float far more (it's a slippery little sucker) than the A320. They land differently, the only similarity being VLS speeds.

I had an ex Boeing pilot tell me that the trick to landing an A320 is leaving the flare until you scare yourself. Tongue in cheek but true. Flaring too high always leads to a bad landing as you run out of energy and drop out of the sky or push the aircraft onto the runway. 

My landing technique A320 series is check sensible ROD into the last 50' feet, don't dive towards the runway OR get shy of the ground! I only start the flare at 20' radalt. After you start the flare, smoothly reduce power to idle during the flare. 'Retard' is a reminder, not an instruction.

If you have a high ROD into the flare, flare a bit higher. If you have a strong headwind and low ROD or very light you might need to flare a bit later.

As well as flaring at the right height, the correct speed is important. Especially on the A320 make sure Vapp is at least 5 kts above the VLS on your PFD once configured. 

I was initially taught 30' for the flare, I found it very hard to land. The chief pilot told me "Forget everything you have been taught. Flare at 20', bring thrust to idle at 10." From then on it clicked for me.

It seems to me that FSL have modelled this quite well. Are you getting the last 100-150 feet properly straight before touch down? Because if you're coming in hot it will spit you out.

 

Ok interesting. Thanks for that. I think my problem is I have way more hours on the PMDG so I can easily slip into "737 thinking" for landing the A320. Especially if the approach conditions are more demanding which can detract me!

Interesting that two relatively similar planes can behave so differently in this respect. Even on the descent. The A320 is a delight, whereas sometimes you have to wrestle to keep the speed under control with the 737. I certainly find myself needing the speedbrake a lot more. I rarely have to touch it with the A320!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

Ok interesting. Thanks for that. I think my problem is I have way more hours on the PMDG so I can easily slip into "737 thinking" for landing the A320. Especially if the approach conditions are more demanding which can detract me!

Interesting that two relatively similar planes can behave so differently in this respect. Even on the descent. The A320 is a delight, whereas sometimes you have to wrestle to keep the speed under control with the 737. I certainly find myself needing the speedbrake a lot more. I rarely have to touch it with the A320!

They both need reigning in with the speed brake when the winds are at your ars* end.

Actually, the A320 will show a bigger profile to a tail wind than the 737 - so beware!

Basically, both have to have the hand brake wrenched on in order to fly the descent when the tail winds are nipping at your buttocks.

 

[dal330200 216]

On 1/31/2018 at 2:44 PM, beep747 said:

I think I read on their forum that the blue sky sound packs are included by default. 

Jos

Oh wouldn't that stink if I paid for sounds that are already there.  They do sound different though.  Doesn't matter much, I can't really enjoy flying this bird with it's current demands on my system anyway.

[Irishcurse 234]

Resisted for a long time getting it. The price was scary. Loved my Aerosoft buses but no v4 available yet and they are taking longer than they even predicted. Broke down and finally purchased it a few months ago. I fly it non stop. I don't have graphics or sound issues. In fact the sounds are some of the best I have heard in the sim. I will still be grabbing Aerosofts when they come out since they have more than just the 320. They also have the 330 in the pipeline. No idea what FSL has coming.

[Zimmerbz 168]

1 hour ago, Irishcurse said:

Resisted for a long time getting it. The price was scary. Loved my Aerosoft buses but no v4 available yet and they are taking longer than they even predicted. Broke down and finally purchased it a few months ago. I fly it non stop. I don't have graphics or sound issues. In fact the sounds are some of the best I have heard in the sim. I will still be grabbing Aerosofts when they come out since they have more than just the 320. They also have the 330 in the pipeline. No idea what FSL has coming.

Fslabs has a 319 in the timeline and another Airbus that I don’t think they announced yet.  No timeframe on the 319 though.