Fenix A320 - Feature Review: Indicating/Recording System

[737_800 434]

Here we go: https://fenixsim.com/2021/09/10/feature-review-indicating-recording/

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by 737_800

[Mike S KPDX 597]

Really cool and enjoy seeing the depth of the product.  However, I am still awaiting demonstration of the things that a real A320 pilot would interact with, utilize and process on almost every flight. 

I will be buying this product, no doubt, but the first things I personally shut down will be 'failures'.  There is a well know A320 pilot that does sims with a webpage.  He was asked this question and he stated that he has about 19,000 in the airbus and has had only two failures, one was an issue with ELAC and required only button press to turn it off (they specifically do not trouble shoot things like that in the air if there are backup available) and the other was something with the nose steering (he was on the ground and maintenance came over fixed it).  I know they train for the big ones like flight control and engine failures, but they have to train for that.

This product will surly make a great study sim.

[737_800 434]

Yes, in the beginning I won't work with failures, too. Just want to be able to operate normal procedures as close to reality as possible. If I have managed that I will dive into failures.

I wish they could implement a feature that recognizes the ratio of the failures that occur in real life and put an option to activate random failures according to likelihood that a failure would happen after certain amount of times on the airplane. Even if you don't get a failure on a flight, it will help to stick to checklists and briefing. The thrill would be that something might happen on that flight.

Looking really forward, and I welcome that release date is apparently not too close, since I haven't mastered the DC-6 yet. If they release around christmas I had still plenty of time to learn the dc-6 and would have a good feeling buying the fenix and focus on learning this aircraft. Anyway what will happen, with this sim and the upcoming addons we're on the bright sight.

[WestAir 2,522]

There's something about doing checklists on Flight Sim that never feels the same compared to real life. In the sim I already know nothing is wrong and it's impossible for anything to break. With a system fidelity at this level, checklists have meaning. Good habits have meaning. Personally I think "beyond study level" sims like this or A2A make for better pilots and more exciting gameplay.

Kudos to the devs.

[Gilandred 690]

10 minutes ago, WestAir said:

There's something about doing checklists on Flight Sim that never feels the same compared to real life. In the sim I already know nothing is wrong and it's impossible for anything to break. With a system fidelity at this level, checklists have meaning. Good habits have meaning.

Having switches that maintain persistency across multiple sim sessions, along with service based random failures, would go along way toward realism.  Of course the fear of death should something go wrong will never be there in a simulated environment.

[Chock 17,769]

The bleed air system simulation with the valve able to fail is something we had for real the other day at work on Aer Lingus A320 EI-DVL, so it is something pilots do have to deal with. On that occasion, the valve which opens to allow the APU to supply air to the engines so they can start was not tripping open. Because of this, when the engine was cranked, it refused to turn because the air wasn't getting to it. What we had to do was tow it back on stand, then manually open the valve, which is under the cowling, then crank the engine on stand so the APU air could get to the engine, then when it was running manually, close the valve and the cowling, then it could push out again and start the other engine from crossbleed. So this air system, and all the bits of it, is stuff which A320 pilots, and ground staff, do have to know about and understand, and sometimes sort out when it isn't behaving properly.

[WestAir 2,522]

6 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

the first things I personally shut down will be 'failures'.  There is a well know A320 pilot that does sims with a webpage.  He was asked this question and he stated that he has about 19,000 in the airbus and has had only two failures, one was an issue with ELAC and required only button press to turn it off (they specifically do not trouble shoot things like that in the air if there are backup available) and the other was something with the nose steering (he was on the ground and maintenance came over fixed it).

So I'm going to do the unspeakable and say this Captain is wrong in his self assessment. Hear me out, though, and see if you agree:

In the real World these aircraft have parts break daily. Hundreds of A320 pilots encounter one of these 3 situations every day:

1. There is a problem with the aircraft. The problem is on the minimum equipment list and the aircraft departs.

2. There is a problem with the aircraft. Maintenance fixes the problem and the aircraft departs.

3. There is a problem with the aircraft. Operations swaps aircraft, and the flight departs on a new aircraft.

Very very rarely does an issue arise after the walk around and preflight check. And so while this well known '320 pilot may have only had 2 in flight issues important enough to warrant an ECAM, he's without a doubt had hundreds of issues arise before pushback that were mitigated through steps 1 through 3. There's no way he's departed without a bulb out or a sensor out in 19k hours. The difference between a simmer and this real world Captain, however, is that while the Captain may not fly if the windshield wiper is INOP, a sim pilot might not notice or care and fly anyway. That's the neat part of having a super robust simulation like this, and I think service based failures can really make getting from A to B a lot more rewarding in that regard, but the hardcore realism is absolutely not for everyone, and that's okay too.

[Mike S KPDX 597]

23 minutes ago, WestAir said:

So I'm going to do the unspeakable and say this Captain is wrong in his self assessment. Hear me out, though, and see if you agree:

In the real World these aircraft have parts break daily. Hundreds of A320 pilots encounter one of these 3 situations every day:

1. There is a problem with the aircraft. The problem is on the minimum equipment list and the aircraft departs.

2. There is a problem with the aircraft. Maintenance fixes the problem and the aircraft departs.

3. There is a problem with the aircraft. Operations swaps aircraft, and the flight departs on a new aircraft.

Very very rarely does an issue arise after the walk around and preflight check. And so while this well known '320 pilot may have only had 2 in flight issues important enough to warrant an ECAM, he's without a doubt had hundreds of issues arise before pushback that were mitigated through steps 1 through 3. There's no way he's departed without a bulb out or a sensor out in 19k hours. The difference between a simmer and this real world Captain, however, is that while the Captain may not fly if the windshield wiper is INOP, a sim pilot might not notice or care and fly anyway. That's the neat part of having a super robust simulation like this, and I think service based failures can really make getting from A to B a lot more rewarding in that regard, but the hardcore realism is absolutely not for everyone, and that's okay too.

Yeah, you are probably very correct.  But the way that I understood the failures as shown in the video was that you can set it to fail in a certain amount of time - great for problem procedure and recovery practice.  I think what some of us are saying is that it would be nice to set up maybe 3 things;

• Randomness of issue (say 0-10)
• Severity of issue (say 0-10)
• MTBF of system (say 0-10000)

Who knows, we are all guessing and maybe they do have something like that.  I am really looking forward to the product no matter what.

[WestAir 2,522]

37 minutes ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Yeah, you are probably very correct.  But the way that I understood the failures as shown in the video was that you can set it to fail in a certain amount of time - great for problem procedure and recovery practice.  I think what some of us are saying is that it would be nice to set up maybe 3 things;

• Randomness of issue (say 0-10)
• Severity of issue (say 0-10)
• MTBF of system (say 0-10000)

Who knows, we are all guessing and maybe they do have something like that.  I am really looking forward to the product no matter what.

That would be amazing. You're right that Fenix seems to be leaning towards just outright failing a system on command, as opposed to implementing a robust "service based (mean time)" failure system, like PMDG / FlyTheMaddog / FSLabs / Etc have implemented.

If that's all we get, it would be an absolute shame, because I really doubt even pilots going up for recurrent or their type rating will ever use half those failures.

EDIT: I have asked on their Discord if service based failures / meat time between failures was A) in the works, B) something that would be seen after release, or C) would never make it in, but I got no answer which usually means they haven't decided yet and don't want to be held to a promise.

Edited September 12, 2021 by WestAir

[Chock 17,769]

If you can simply select an implement failures, this would make it a good learning tool for the real thing, but if they can kick in randomly, that'd be more fun for a hardcore simmer. The danger is of course that if you have the thing capable of simulating failures realistically by being random, the developer will probably end up getting support queries because something's 'not working' when in fact it actually is, but realistically simulating a failed sub system.

Things certainly do break on the A320, as they do on all aeroplanes; probably the most common one which actually affects the operation in a noticeable way on Airbuses, is a busted APU, requiring an FEP shutdown on arrival, or an air start on departure. I really doubt there's any pilot of an A320 who has never had that problem, but the trouble with that is it's more like something which would require a sim add-on such as GSX or Pushback Express to simulate it.

 

[RobF2 150]

11 hours ago, WestAir said:

There's something about doing checklists on Flight Sim that never feels the same compared to real life. In the sim I already know nothing is wrong and it's impossible for anything to break. With a system fidelity at this level, checklists have meaning. Good habits have meaning. Personally I think "beyond study level" sims like this or A2A make for better pilots and more exciting gameplay.

Kudos to the devs.

Yep, A2A simulating fouling of plugs if you taxi around full rich was an eye opener for me.  Hate how passive the mixture control is in so many MSFS aircraft.  Nothing to do with A320s, but agree it all makes for much greater immersion if not following procedures properly results in realistic consequences.  

Edited September 12, 2021 by RobF2

[ADamiani 470]

7 hours ago, WestAir said:

That would be amazing. You're right that Fenix seems to be leaning towards just outright failing a system on command, as opposed to implementing a robust "service based (mean time)" failure system, like PMDG / FlyTheMaddog / FSLabs / Etc have implemented.

If that's all we get, it would be an absolute shame, because I really doubt even pilots going up for recurrent or their type rating will ever use half those failures.

EDIT: I have asked on their Discord if service based failures / meat time between failures was A) in the works, B) something that would be seen after release, or C) would never make it in, but I got no answer which usually means they haven't decided yet and don't want to be held to a promise.

Generating faults based on operation time is not hard. You can sample random numbers from an appropriate distribution in the exponential family (Weibull just to name one) and you are done. Of course you need statistics on actual faults in order to parameterize the model, so a lot of data. Hence problem number one is availability of RWD (Real World Data).

Problem number two is how many system faults you want to simulate. Every single component may fail, and do so in different ways. This goes from very simple to incredibly complex. It's a matter of choice.

Problem number three is with causality. If you use distributions as functions of time only, there is the hidden assumption that all airplanes are handled in the same way by pilots, encounter exactly the same meteo conditions, are maintained in exactly the same way by technicians, and so on. This is simply not true, and if you want realism you have to take that into account. Not to mention problem number 4: a fault may go unnoticed and then determine a secondary fault that is potentially catastrophic. 

Not easy at all, and data availability is probably an issue (and with the added degrees of freedom and interdependency you need A LOT of data).

As usual, it all depends on where you want to draw the line. I am sure the devs have already taken their decisions, we as users should remember that complexity is not linear: at a certain point, adding some minor detail means a lot of design, data procurement, implementation, and testing time.

A.

[Bigbluss 304]

16 hours ago, WestAir said:

There's something about doing checklists on Flight Sim that never feels the same compared to real life. In the sim I already know nothing is wrong and it's impossible for anything to break. With a system fidelity at this level, checklists have meaning. Good habits have meaning. Personally I think "beyond study level" sims like this or A2A make for better pilots and more exciting gameplay.

Kudos to the devs.

You get this in some combat sims - I've had failures and hot starts in the viper in BMS and the Heatblur Tomcat, but I'd welcome the opportunity for it in commercial sims too. I like that the PMDG DC6 doesn't always start first time, definitely increases immersion.

[Chock 17,769]

It's probably worth bearing in mind that this thing is based on the ProSim stuff, which, whilst also being somewhat intended for entertainment and to facilitate home cockpit builders, it is primarily aimed at real-world operators and the training requirements these have, so it's very useful to have that kind of training capability, but the focus of such capabilities is more likely to be on the ability to use these for training and familiarity rather than for super-random entertainment purposes. Doesn't mean it won't be able to do both of course, but I suspect it will be of more utility for learning than in presenting challenging flight simming at home.

The A320 is pretty reliable to be honest; I don't think I've ever worked on one in real life which was actually unable to despatch due to a fault, albeit occasionally a tiny bit late owing to having to sort some minor technical issue out. In reality, most of the problems we ever have with getting them out on time, is passengers not turning up and having to offload bags out of a ULD five minutes before the bloody thing is due to go, then having to put them back on again after they then turn up at the gate two minutes later - I'm looking at you, British Airways BA1835 Heathrow Shuttle - or a slot delay from Euro-Control.

Most problems you get with an A320, and its little and bigger sisters, are because of what's going on here, rather than in the cockpit:

And if it isn't that, then it is when the thing is all zipped up apart from the passenger door, but you're waiting for the bridge to come off because some passenger is being a twonk:

Edited September 12, 2021 by Chock

[Mike S KPDX 597]

4 hours ago, Chock said:

It's probably worth bearing in mind that this thing is based on the ProSim stuff, which, whilst also being somewhat intended for entertainment and to facilitate home cockpit builders, it is primarily aimed at real-world operators and the training requirements these have, so it's very useful to have that kind of training capability, but the focus of such capabilities is more likely to be on the ability to use these for training and familiarity rather than for super-random entertainment purposes. Doesn't mean it won't be able to do both of course, but I suspect it will be of more utility for learning than in presenting challenging flight simming at home.

The A320 is pretty reliable to be honest; I don't think I've ever worked on one in real life which was actually unable to despatch due to a fault, albeit occasionally a tiny bit late owing to having to sort some minor technical issue out. In reality, most of the problems we ever have with getting them out on time, is passengers not turning up and having to offload bags out of a ULD five minutes before the bloody thing is due to go, then having to put them back on again after they then turn up at the gate two minutes later - I'm looking at you, British Airways BA1835 Heathrow Shuttle - or a slot delay from Euro-Control.

Most problems you get with an A320, and its little and bigger sisters, are because of what's going on here, rather than in the cockpit:

And if it isn't that, then it is when the thing is all zipped up apart from the passenger door, but you're waiting for the bridge to come off because some passenger is being a twonk:

Seeing this pic reminds me of this video that I found.  I did not know there were visual marker points on the aircraft to limit the turning of the tug.  The comment about it being called the 'red line' but the ground crew refer to it as the 'unemployment line' was funny.