So the Fenix A320, a high fidelity airliner, is being released. You can read more at their website at https://fenixsim.com/2021/07/12/the-fenix-simulations-airbus-a320/.

Chewwy94 is doing an interview with the developer right now on Twitch:

I won't use the term "study level" because let's wait for the release to see if the fidelity is that high first (let's temper our expectations).

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

Brave move to go up against a free built-in aircraft with a well respected (and Marketplace supported) improvement mod, with your first product 🙂

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Matchstick

Just now, Matchstick said:

Brave move to go up against a free built-in aircraft with a well respected (and Marketplace supported) realism mod, with your first product 🙂

Yeah, I'm not sure why they made that decision.  The FBW A320 dates back to late August or early September of last year I think.  

Anyways, if this Fenix A320 ends up being that good, this will make things more difficult for FSLabs, if they are also working on an A320.

Reading the features post. This almost feels to good to be true.

And they say it’s nearly complete.

14 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Reading the features post. This almost feels to good to be true.

And they say it’s nearly complete.

I would like to temper expectations.  Because sometimes, the community hypes things up a lot and then we are let down when the product is released.  But KatiePilot and BlackBox711 from Twitch have good things to say about this.  FYI, KatiePilot and BlackBox711 are real life A320 pilots that stream on Twitch.  In addition, KatiePilot was super disappointed by MSFS on its release when she was flying the default A320, so if KatiePilot really likes this Fenix A320 for MSFS, that could be interesting.

But anyways, let's temper our expectations.  Let it be released first and then let's judge how good it is.

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

According to the dev stream there FPS, 2 FPS worse than the default, 4-5 FPS better than FBW, and this is before any optimization passes.

The dev didn’t give any specs though 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

5 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I would like to temper expectations.  Because sometimes, the community hypes things up a lot and then we are let down when the product is released.  But KatiePilot and BlackBox711 from Twitch have good things to say about this.  FYI, KatiePilot and BlackBox711 are real life A320 pilots that stream on Twitch.

But anyways, let's temper our expectations.  Let it be released first and then let's judge how good it is.

I wonder if they got A320 Sim Pilot to test. 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

1 minute ago, Tuskin38 said:

I wonder if they got A320 Sim Pilot to test. 

They got 2 IRL A320  rated pilot that are twitch streamer. BlackBox71 and KatiePilot.

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by fogboundturtle

26 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Reading the features post. This almost feels to good to be true. And they say it’s nearly complete.

24 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I would like to temper expectations.  Because sometimes, the community hypes things up a lot and then we are let down when the product is released.  But KatiePilot and BlackBox711 from Twitch have good things to say about this.  FYI, KatiePilot and BlackBox711 are real life A320 pilots that stream on Twitch.

Definitely, most FS releases tend to be overhyped (usually by the developer if we're honest) and subsequently a serious let down because they're either bug ridden, under featured, or both. Less reputable developers love to bandy around "realistic", "fully simulated", "authentic", "real pilot tested", "4K textures" (which is a meaningless term by the way), etc like confetti. Flight simming has turned me into a harsh cynic, Fenix's press release and screenshots are great (backlight bleed is a nice aesthetic touch) but I believe nothing until is fully proven - for me at the moment it might as well be a wish list of intentions, rather than nearly complete features.

Speaking of which, "nearly complete" sounds a lot like soon™️. It's definitely got a whiff of "we're internally hoping to release in 3 months because we've almost run out of money but actually it'll be 18 months and still full of bugs". Not saying that is the case, but again, once bitten, twice shy. It seems really soon since MFS's release to be announcing a nearly complete complex and feature rich airliner. - although Aerosoft managed it with the CRJ so it's not an impossibility.

 

30 minutes ago, Matchstick said:

Brave move to go up against a free built-in aircraft with a well respected (and Marketplace supported) improvement mod, with your first product 🙂

28 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Anyways, if this Fenix A320 ends up being that good, this will make things more difficult for FSLabs...

Brave or stupid, depending how you look at it. It's going to have to be absolutely awesome to make people pay out over the free alternative. I doubt FS Labs are worried though, it took them an age to get the FSX version out and by all accounts most things will need recoding for MFS so I don't think that'll be ready for 3+ years. I doubt FSL have started much given all the other stuff they have to do, so if Fennix is good a logical developer would just write-off whatever work they'd done and not release.

I really hope Fenix lives up to all they've stated as it does sound great. I want my cynicism proved to be misplaced!

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by ckyliu

It's sad in a way given all the work the FlyByWire team has put in.  It's a pity it isn't an A319 or A321. If the printer is INOP I won't buy it!

They said it will be a consumer friendly price, what ever that means. 

It supports Navigraph and Simbrief.

Uses it's own flight planning, so it won't work with the default sim planner, like the Aerosoft CRJ.

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

If it's anything like PMDG's or FSL's definition of "consumer friendly" it will be £many. Hopefully it's not 3 figures in USD with a paid expansion for every size variant 🙄

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by ckyliu

They bought A320 cockpit panels and scratched them up just to see what it looks like in real life for reference.

*******, these people are hardcore. Plus the 3D scanning mentioned in the post.

Paint weathering, you can see places where they painted over places where the paint worn down. 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

These guys must not be very smart.... (Initially I had written stronger words, but didn't want to run afoul of the mods🙂)

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Ricardo41

2 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

These guys must not be very smart.... (Initially I had written stronger words, but didn't want to run afoul of the mods🙂)

I think the opposite.  Some users demand the highest of quality for addons.  Not saying the FBW isn't amazing for freeware...but this version appears to even be better than FSLabs.