It looks like the first complex airliner for FSX (and FS9) is going to be out as early as next week! On top of that the first 'real' Airbus since the PSS!Anyone else as excited as me?http://www.wilcopub.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=prod_airbus1Pat

Looking forward to the 'buses in general, particularly PMDG. I'm a bit concerned about the qualty of some so hopefully someone will try a few things for me when they buy it. I suppose all of them will be a step beyond what we have had before but few will reach PMDG/Level D standard.What I do to get a feel for how good it is going to be is look at the gestation period. Take a look at how long PMDG/Level D take from announcement to delivery for there products and then compare it. You should get a very rough idea of how good it will be. For an Airbus add 30%. :-)

Looks interesting. Think I'll wait for some early purchase reports though.

Actually Howard, the time from announcement to delivery is only long because almost none of the developers do this fulltime. I know that none of the PSS, LevelD or PMDG crews are fulltime FS developers. The time to get the product out the door is predicated on how much spare time they have. It should be obvious that if they were taking 2 years per aircraft and working at it fulltime, they'd die of starvation and development would have to stop for lack of electrictity or a place to live long before the aircraft is released.Building a complex aircraft from start to finish, fulltime, is not even 5 months. A complex 3d visual model can be done in a few weeks and complex panel in a couple of months. This is with a team pounding out the code, fulltime. So, the perceived time to *code* the aircraft cannot be used as even a cursorary indicator of its quality in the least. EDIT: As for the A320 series, I plan to have it on day one. Now I gotta go find a good joystick replacement for my AETI yoke.

That is so true. But then you have to ask yourself is it worth waiting until perhaps mid 2008 for their Airbus? That gives you maybe a year and a half of use before the next version of FS comes out.

Mike, Your right to a large degree of course. I was thinking about that when posting. Some are created with full time working and this does shorten the time. However, doing the research, completely undertanding the aircraft and then doing endless beta iterations to get it almost perfect still take a lot of hours on top of the build phase. For me, I'll give it a year full time two years part time;-)

I'm as excited as Pat, I will get it when it is released and will report back.Jeff

I Don't think I could get too excited about anything from Feelthere. I have several of their products and they certainly do not rank as high as Level-D and PMDG in quality. However, I am curious about the new airbus project from Dreamfleet/RealityXP/Flight Sceney - aka Airliner XP. Check out the announcement:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=20170

Given the people behind Airliner-XP and the unique RXP technologies used, I guess this bird will outperform Wilco/FeelThere's by far (and set a landmark for PMDG and others - but let's see).FeelThere's products are good, but they lack the professional and "finished" touch of the ones from developers like PMDG or LDS for instance. A big disappointment for me is always the manuals which are almost non-existant...Airbus planes add another level of complexity, and looking at FeelThere's history, they often needed more than one or two service pack to get rid of the most annoying bugs.So, I'm excited about the product release as well, but I heavily doubt the bird will be really enjoyable during the first 3-6 months...Andreas

>Given the people behind Airliner-XP and the unique RXP>technologies used, I guess this bird will outperform>Wilco/FeelThere's by far (and set a landmark for PMDG and>others - but let's see).>>FeelThere's products are good, but they lack the professional>and "finished" touch of the ones from developers like PMDG or>LDS for instance. A big disappointment for me is always the>manuals which are almost non-existant...>>Airbus planes add another level of complexity, and looking at>FeelThere's history, they often needed more than one or two>service pack to get rid of the most annoying bugs.>>So, I'm excited about the product release as well, but I>heavily doubt the bird will be really enjoyable during the>first 3-6 months...Andreas I definately have to agree with you here. I'm not a fan of the Wilco/Feelthere process.... their planes never work out of the gate. Not only that but they often have pretty horrendous framerates. I'm looking forward to seeing this Airbus from Airliner-XP... I have a feeling that it's not going to *raise* the bar... it's going to absolutely annihilate what we perceive as the current bar.

Well this is certainly going to get very very interesting with all these "buses" (airbus) being releasedhere they are:1. AirSimmer bus package looks really goodhttp://www.airsimmer.com2. Things To Come outfit making a bus as well and based on their little preview movie it looks greathttp://www.things-to-come.com/a320/3. Wilco/Feelthere with the release of their buses- although they have been slipping recently and their products have tons of bugs initially with non-existent support from Wilcohttp://www.wilcopub.com4. PMDG will certainly be a great bus product but not in the near future, probably in 2008 if not laterhttp://precisionmanuals.com5. Airliner XP - airbus 3 years in development it better be good!http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=20170http://www.airliner-xp.com/a320features.htmlAm I missing anybody else?please add to the listBo

so which one will you choose?

Airliner-XP..

>so which one will you choose?I would take the PMDG, no doubt even with the very little we know about it so far.But it will be quite some time before we see it so for now I am waiting for reviews and feedback on the others.

wilco is the last thing i'd get excited about, agreed! I'll be looking at this http://airsimmer.com/ and PMDG of course