FF A320 Ultimate is now available!

[costamesa 88]

On 20/02/2018 at 0:36 PM, carlito777 said:

Yes, I second that. I never understood why developers spend their precious time on things like tutorial flights. Nowadays, there are so many great and free sources of information available. Apart from written documents, Youtubers like Blackbox711 are a far more efficient and also better way to learn how to fly an Airbus. Blackbox711, for example, was a real-world Airbus pilot, who can teach you tons of things on how to operate the bus in a much better (and correct) way than a tutorial flight or add-on manual ever could. So why should devs waste time on these things. They should rather focus their time on developing new features and ironing out bugs. 

Carlito, a tutorial is not a aviation simulation need, it is a business need. You dont teach your customers how to fly a plane with just a tutorial of course but there are people like Mario said and I am one of them. I almost "hate" watching videos online, most of the time video producers are talking, relatively if not totally, about unnecessary things I dont know for why and I feel like that time is totally wasted. However with a well prepared tutorial first you get to know not only what to do but also when to do, and where to do.  

[Xiropillo 13]

In my opinion a tutorial is a good way to show what is simulated or not. A good way for learning but also for catching new customers. 

Even some developers publish it before launching the product or make it available through public website.

But mainly I use it for knowing the product simulated systems and for in deep learning I use YouTube and online manuals.

My car has a manual and is not for teaching me as a driver.

[RJC68 823]

Well I couldn't resist and bit the bullet on the weekend and purchased this bird. I am pretty familiar with Airbuses and the transition was pretty easy. I want to learn more on the technical side and there are lots of good resources to do so. I had a great chance over the last few days to put it through it's paces and I love it. I get consistently solid performance on my system without making any changes to the settings. The only thing I found is that during the middle of a pushback using "Better Pushback" my CPU usage rockets and the result is frames drop to around 17. It doesn't last long and then returns to normal but it did happen every time. When I get more time I will try to update the plugin or go back to the default. Other than that no issues apart from my own mistakes lol

I have to say though the FBW on this aircraft is incredible. I have never flown a real A320 but I can honestly say this is the closest I will get. It is simply a joy to hand fly with my X-55. It even taxi's like a dream.

My last flight yesterday evening was a late afternoon departure from Valencia. I use Ortho 4XP scenery, stock clouds which by the way are fantastic now (SMP has been retired!) It really was a magical experience. It is the most realistic I have ever seen my hobby looking. The only reason I hit the AP button was so I could look around as I followed the SID up the coast before heading north over the mountains. Staggeringly amazing.

Cannot wait to get some more hours in this incredible addon. It is going to be a while before the rest of my fleet get in the air lol

Richard 

[carlito777 712]

44 minutes ago, Richdem said:

Well I couldn't resist and bit the bullet on the weekend and purchased this bird. I am pretty familiar with Airbuses and the transition was pretty easy. I want to learn more on the technical side and there are lots of good resources to do so. I had a great chance over the last few days to put it through it's paces and I love it. I get consistently solid performance on my system without making any changes to the settings. The only thing I found is that during the middle of a pushback using "Better Pushback" my CPU usage rockets and the result is frames drop to around 17. It doesn't last long and then returns to normal but it did happen every time. When I get more time I will try to update the plugin or go back to the default. Other than that no issues apart from my own mistakes lol

I have to say though the FBW on this aircraft is incredible. I have never flown a real A320 but I can honestly say this is the closest I will get. It is simply a joy to hand fly with my X-55. It even taxi's like a dream.

My last flight yesterday evening was a late afternoon departure from Valencia. I use Ortho 4XP scenery, stock clouds which by the way are fantastic now (SMP has been retired!) It really was a magical experience. It is the most realistic I have ever seen my hobby looking. The only reason I hit the AP button was so I could look around as I followed the SID up the coast before heading north over the mountains. Staggeringly amazing.

Cannot wait to get some more hours in this incredible addon. It is going to be a while before the rest of my fleet get in the air lol

Richard 

I fully agree. I also finally bought the FF A320 on the weekend. Haven‘t touched P3D since. The performance is incredible (esp. compared to the FSL bus in P3D). And handflying it feels so believable. It is really a joy. X-Plane in general has come such a long way. So many gaps to P3D have been closed with some things even better now in X-Plane. The FF A320 could be my final reason for a complete transition to X-Plane. 

[finkelstein 25]

On 20.2.2018 at 7:24 PM, MarioDonick said:

At least a simplified quick flight tutorial is not asked too much. Just to get the bird in the air, for a first success. The IXEG 737 does this very well.

I agree. They are a very, very good series of video tutorials increasing in complexity over time. But to be fair, they do have one of the best educators in the X-Plane environment on their team. @Janov's many videos on scenery development are always fantastic tend to provide the perfect balance of being concise and to the point with enough knowledge to understand the logic behind a tool or function.

Maybe he'll do a short series on the A320 some day as he apparently does currently fly the Airbus, although I hear he's not too fond of it ;)

[RJC68 823]

On 2/27/2018 at 2:20 PM, carlito777 said:

I fully agree. I also finally bought the FF A320 on the weekend. Haven‘t touched P3D since. The performance is incredible (esp. compared to the FSL bus in P3D). And handflying it feels so believable. It is really a joy. X-Plane in general has come such a long way. So many gaps to P3D have been closed with some things even better now in X-Plane. The FF A320 could be my final reason for a complete transition to X-Plane. 

I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 10 and X-Plane last August. Before I had FSX Steam & P3d alongside X-plane. I can honestly say I haven't once looked back. After the Windows installation which was very easy, getting X-Plane running was a real breeze. I have it installed on a separate SSD so all I did was re install junction link magic and create links to the other HDD my scenery is on. I could easily spend 2 days setting FSX up and dreaded ever doing it lol

Go on and take the plunge :)

X-Plane is really a force to be reckoned with in the flight sim hobby stakes. I now spend more time flying and zero time constantly tweaking to get the best performance. Even my aging i3570K @ 4.4Ghz still gives me a very fluid sim. I showed my neigbour the FF320 last night, he is a retired 727 flight engineer and he could not believe the realism of my setup.

Happy days 

[Heavy Metal 83]

I really like this add-on and the save functionality is my personal favorite as it seems to work quite well and I do not need to be that afraid anymore that x-plane or any plug-in crashes the sim in flight and all progress might be lost.

I also love the feeling this plane is providing. It just feels right somehow and has a very good fluid performance.

Downsides? Well, some system features are missing like the PROGRESS page Report for now. The most bizarre thing I encountered so far was that I was already mid flight when I noticed that I actually had forgotten to turn on the fuel pumps... well, I am not a real pilot, but taking off an airbus and being able to start APU and engines without fuel pumps running sounds not that correct to me. I retried this to see if I missed any error messages flashing, but no. In the FSLabs A320, it let me start the APU (not sure if that is working in RL) but it severely warned me about the pumps when starting up the engines...  Well, I think this is part of the stuff, they are still looking into.

So still some things to do for FF guys, but anyways, this plane is a really great product and feels very polished already now. And it is the main reason I am back in X-Plane now more often.

 

[Xiropillo 13]

1 hour ago, Heavy Metal said:

I really like this add-on and the save functionality is my personal favorite as it seems to work quite well and I do not need to be that afraid anymore that x-plane or any plug-in crashes the sim in flight and all progress might be lost.

I also love the feeling this plane is providing. It just feels right somehow and has a very good fluid performance.

Downsides? Well, some system features are missing like the PROGRESS page Report for now. The most bizarre thing I encountered so far was that I was already mid flight when I noticed that I actually had forgotten to turn on the fuel pumps... well, I am not a real pilot, but taking off an airbus and being able to start APU and engines without fuel pumps running sounds not that correct to me. I retried this to see if I missed any error messages flashing, but no. In the FSLabs A320, it let me start the APU (not sure if that is working in RL) but it severely warned me about the pumps when starting up the engines...  Well, I think this is part of the stuff, they are still looking into.

So still some things to do for FF guys, but anyways, this plane is a really great product and feels very polished already now. And it is the main reason I am back in X-Plane now more often.

 

Gravity should let you starting APU and even engines with no fuel pumps. Not possible in FF. I don't know if that is correct or not.

[aidanlegras 7]

The A320 has an independent fuel pump dedicated to the APU that will operate when the wing tank pumps are selected off and whenever there is no other electrical power other than batteries to the aircraft. In normal operation it’s uses the wing tank pumps. 

To add my two cents as a RW pilot, I only use the sim for looking at Airbus abnormals. If you’re interested in abnormals such as hydraulic failures and electrical failures then I would highly commend FS Labs A320. Although their list of failures is not exhaustive it is certainly extensive and with rare exception it is very accurate. 

I have found some flaws in FS Labs modelling of engine out operation but even the engine failures are pretty good when failures occur at or around V1, the ECAM modelling is essentially perfect. 

I have not used the FF320 at this stage and perhaps in time it will reach a similar level of authenticity to the FS Labs A320 however, from what I can see at this early stage, there is a long way to go. 

Good to seee some competition now in the market for those interested in Airbus. 

[Glenn_C 135]

9 hours ago, aidanlegras said:

The A320 has an independent fuel pump dedicated to the APU that will operate when the wing tank pumps are selected off and whenever there is no other electrical power other than batteries to the aircraft. In normal operation it’s uses the wing tank pumps. 

To add my two cents as a RW pilot, I only use the sim for looking at Airbus abnormals. If you’re interested in abnormals such as hydraulic failures and electrical failures then I would highly commend FS Labs A320. Although their list of failures is not exhaustive it is certainly extensive and with rare exception it is very accurate. 

I have found some flaws in FS Labs modelling of engine out operation but even the engine failures are pretty good when failures occur at or around V1, the ECAM modelling is essentially perfect. 

I have not used the FF320 at this stage and perhaps in time it will reach a similar level of authenticity to the FS Labs A320 however, from what I can see at this early stage, there is a long way to go. 

Good to seee some competition now in the market for those interested in Airbus. 

There are already many failures built into FFA320 they are just not visible in a nice UI format. There is a failure command console you can call up to set any number of failures, probably running into their thousands at this time. Watch some Blackbox711 VOD's on Twitch as he used this method a few weeks ago. FMGC failures / FAC failures / Fuel failures etc...

[aidanlegras 7]

Again, I’m not familiar with the FFA320 I would be interested to see a screen shot of the failures that are available if possible. There isn’t a lot of information that I’ve been able to dig up independently.