Why does the B.B. A330 have such a bad reputation, from looks it looks fine to me so what’s the major cons holding back an aircraft which to me looks like has some potential in a so far relatively unfulfilled area of the flight sim market (as there is an a330 in only development, and no planned a340)

BB's poor reputation is well earned.  First, consider their A320, which was released 6 years ago...fast forward to today, and it's still an incomplete product.  In fact, there hasn't been a substantial update in 3 years. To that point, it seems like BB is no longer interested in updating this product; this decision is probably based on Aerosoft and FSL releasing their A320s.  The A330 is following a similar trajectory.   In short, they'll sell you an incomplete product with the promise of regular updates; however, in 6+ years, they've yet to deliver on ANY of said promises.  Plus, they've fallen WAY behind other developers in ingenuity, sound and graphics; yet, they still want to charge premium prices.  Finally, there's the crap they pulled as PSS to consider...  

My advise, wait until Aerosoft releases their A330

Edited August 25, 20187 yr by kingm56

37 minutes ago, Billkhaled said:

Why does the B.B. A330 have such a bad reputation, from looks it looks fine to me so what’s the major cons holding back an aircraft which to me looks like has some potential in a so far relatively unfulfilled area of the flight sim market (as there is an a330 in only development, and no planned a340)

About the only good thing about the BSS is the external model. Otherwise:

- Interior VC modeling and texturing is very bad. Just compare it to the Aerosoft or FSL A320 and you'll see that BBS's artwork looks outdated and far from realistic.

- The flight dynamics don't feel right. Although I've never flown an actual airbus I've flown several high-quality simulations across the big 2 sim platforms and I know how an airbus should behave. I find the BBS a struggle to fly as it doesn't behave predictably and realistically. 

- The sounds are very bad. TSS' soundpack is required to make it sound acceptable.

- The FMGS only operates semi-realistically and from what I can tell doesn't support loading a pre-saved flight plan. This makes inserting waypoints on a long haul flight a pain (and is not realistic as real pilots usually don't input each waypoint manually anymore) 

- It does not behave nicely if you restart a saved flight, meaning you need to keep your sim running for an entire long haul and hope it doesn't crash. Very annoying. 

- As already stated, BBS has a history of letting their projects go stagnant to move on to the next new shiny beta release they can sell. 

- And with all of this they charge premium-level prices. 

A pretty external model isn't everything (and honestly it isn't even that pretty, it's just 'decent'). At least Carenado, who also has high prices and mediocre systems/flight models, gives you some of the best visual and texture work you can find in sim addons. 

Their reputation is based on what they did in their former incarnation as PSS (Google it), however, they attempted to redress that. Sadly, if you give a dog a bad name, then that bad name will stick. In part they've only got themselves to blame for that, however, what a lot of people don't mention when this subject arises, is that in trying to redress the balance, since way back in 2012, Black Box Simulations actually let people download the entire PSS FS2004 (aka FS9) version of the PSS Airbus A320, including all the add-on stuff for it, if they provided proof of an original purchase, which meant that they'd get about 100 quid's worth of add-ons for a nominal admin fee which I think was a couple of Euros, so it's not quite true about them 'doing a runner' as many people claim was the case.

If you are not familiar with that old FS9 Airbus, it used to be the best Airbus simulation you could find for Flight Simulator, not that it was a patch on the sort of thing you can buy these days, but we are talking nearly twenty years ago. At that time, many people were of the opinion that it wouldn't even be possible to make a realistic Airbus which would work in Flight Simulator, and to honest, they were kind of right in that, because it took the best part of those twenty years before FSL managed to do it and Lefteris - the main guy from FSL and former PMDG dev - had to leave PMDG to commence development of an Airbus A320 because others at PMDG were among those thinking it couldn't be done. Likewise, Aerosoft have only now managed to make a fairly decent Airbus too, and that is not for Flight Simulator, but its successor, P3D.

As you note, these days Black Box Simulations still struggle to overcome that poor reputation, but I personally think people are going a bit over the top in holding the grudge against them for this length of time. After all, they're not the only FS add-on developer to have pulled some dodgy stuff once in a while, and that includes some big names; without going into detail, it's fair to say the makers of the other two high-end Airbuses for FSX and P3D (FSL and Aerosoft) could easily be similarly accused of some less than ideal practices, and they are by no means the only ones either.

Anyway, the present BBS Airbuses are not bad products, although they are the subject of a ridiculously overlong 'prologue' program which has been promising to see them become complete with every feature under the sun for a number of years, and this doesn't help their reputation, particularly when there are now several very good Airbuses kicking about, although it's BBS or nothing if you want a 330 or 340.

What you can do with BBS Airbuses (and all their products in fact) is download them and try them out for free, so you or anyone else has nothing to lose in doing that. I did that and was happy enough with one of their Airbuses to end up not only buying that one (P3D/FSX A340) but also their A320, A321 and A330. They have some strong points for sure, for example, the nav lights and strobes on them are better than either the FSL Airbus or the new Aerosoft one (both of which have weedy pale nav lights which look nothing like they do on the real aeroplane, real nav lights, especially the new LED ones are blindingly bright). The tiller system on the BBS 'Buses is also better than it is on most other airliners including all those from the big name developers, with the possible exception of Majestic, which has a great tiller system on its Q400. The load manager is better on the BBS 'Buses too.

Now I'm not suggesting the BBS Airbuses are perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they are not as bad as some people would have you believe, and as noted, it would cost anyone nothing to find that out for themselves with a demo.

It's also worth noting that I have actually found their email support to be quick and responsive and as noted, their add-on livery manager and payload/pre-flight utility is better than most other ones from other developers. You can find that out for yourself too for free, as it is part of all their add-ons.

I'm not going to suggest that what they did in the past was acceptable, but I'm not going to hold a massive grudge against them forever either, as some people appear to want to do.

Here's a a video I made comparing the three Airbuses from FSL, Aerosoft and BBS graphically:

 

Edited August 25, 20187 yr by Chock

No one jumps on Milviz - now where is that B350 again? Just providing some balance.

1 hour ago, DavidP said:

No one jumps on Milviz - now where is that B350 again? Just providing some balance.

If you're going to provide balance, at least do so comparing apples-to-apples vice apples-to-jeeps.  Yes, the B350 is unfinished; HOWEVER, Milviz is currently not selling the product.  Conversely, BB IS selling an unfinished product with a 'promise' to finish it in the future.  To date, after 6 years, we have yet to see them adhere to said promises...

Its extremely unfair to conflate MilViz's business model with BlackBox...

Edited August 25, 20187 yr by kingm56

1 hour ago, kingm56 said:

Its extremely unfair to conflate MilViz's business model with BlackBox...

I agree.  It seems to me that BlackBox has a tendency to neglect their products and promises. Their simulation is not bad as far as they have taken it, but it doesn't seem to be going any further. Or maybe it is, but really slowly.

Milviz makes some outstanding products and they are working on that KingAir 350i.  I believe they actually partially built it, then scrapped everything and started all over because they were not satisfied with the way it was coming together.

Everything that they have made that is released and complete is a premium product of the highest level.