5 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

Well, given that your tight budget allowed for flightsim peripherals to the tune of +1500$, surely a second copy should be within reach …

One could always start a go fund me for the second copy.   😉

I'm starting one for my first copy, I'm a worthy cause, honest! 🤣 DONATE NOW

Nah, tbh, if I was starting a go fund me it would need to be for car tyres 😅

Edited May 19, 20224 yr by ckyliu

6 hours ago, anden145 said:

Can't you just purchase 2 copies? I mean - create one account for you and one for your son? That's what I'd do in your situation, as you clearly intent to use the product on two different computers at the same time? Or am I missing something?

Yeah, two different PCs by two different people.... So by that logic, if you had 4 relatives, wanting to run it on 4 different PCs, you should only have to buy one copy........????? Absurd. 

24 minutes ago, superspud said:

If it's two different people in different places then that's a... stretch, but I see absolutely no reason why anyone should pay for another copy to swap their own machine. 

My computers die regularly, have to be repaired, one might be in another place. 

The de/re activation waiting for a little guy to wake up, have his coffee and pull a lever in the office seems like an absolutely horrible idea to me. 

I have other software that's one machine per time, but that movement to another machine does not require physical intervention from someone else. 

 

What kind of PCs are you buying that need to be repaired regularly? 

Sigh... everytime I get a notification of new posts in this topic I think 'YES, more interesting stuff about the Fenix A320!" But nah, instead people are moaning about licenses and what not. Man, I almost feel forced to watch some horrible Twitch-stream to get my hourly Fenix-fix.

10 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Aamir's announcement on the Fenix discord below ... their discord is just blowing up lol, and has now surpassed over 20,000 members wowsa.

https://discord.com/channels/736572376967282769/736710909887643679/976646514451562546
 

Aamir — Today at 20:44
Hey @everyone. I hope I'm not jinxing anything, but I believe we may have just built our final release candidate - which means it's time to talk about a few things and I'm sorry but this'll be a long one!

Lets start by getting this out the way: release schedule. We're going to let this RC build sail the high seas of our notoriously meddlesome testers for a little while, just to be confident we're not about to ruin a few thousand people's day. We expect this process to take a day or two depending on what shows up. As much as I'd love to hold onto our little A320 until every single aspect is perfect in our eyes, the reality is you have to draw a line under it at some point and throw it out of the nest. This has been an absolute labour of love, all-nighters and passion to create a flight simulation experience we want - and hopefully you do too.

This being our first product launch, and not one that looks likely to fly under the radar if we make a mess of it, we're doing our best to prepare all aspects of the product purchase/install/user experience etc. We WILL invariably get something wrong - hopefully small, but just know we're putting our all into this and anything that comes up will be resolved as quickly as possible. With that said, if potential day 1 issues are not your jam by all means steer clear for a while - there are no badges handed out for purchasing the moment it's available; we'd rather every customer was a happy one. Sit back, watch some videos, read the reviews from those you trust, see whether it's right for your simming needs (I know some of our devs spend far too long in the BAe 146...).

I'm going to do something a bit unusual here and talk about some of the weaknesses of our unreleased product. Stuff I would want to know before purchasing. There's two big ones I'd like to address: engines and DUs. Engines are a fun one, MSFS gives us a single point of tuning for fuel-flow - either it puts out some Saturn V flow figures in climb at low altitude, or it sips fuel in the cruise - there's just no winning. We've fretted over it as best we can, and we're seeing about a 6% margin to the real numbers, balancing all aspects of flight and then rounding up on the slightly more efficient side so you land with a few gallons more than you need, not a few less...! Ultimately we think the best way forward is a fully custom engine model. We actually already started poking in this route with start-up/shut-down, EGT, spool times etc - but to go much further and do it properly requires some SERIOUS work, and might not prove fruitful for some time. Given we're so close to the numbers already, holding back for an undefined period of time (at least a few months) doesn't seem worth it. Quite frankly, to the average eye nothing will appear amiss, but you guys are far from average aren't you? Once post-launch clean-up calms down, we'll get cracking on a fully 'Fenix' engine solution. We'll also take a closer look at the displays. We're not entirely happy with them either, despite how minor and cosmetic the issues are (shape scaling, text positioning etc). But again, we want to tackle it properly rather than with ducktape and prayers. If you're not really sure what I'm talking about at this point on either of these items, it gives you an idea of how relatively minor they are in the scale of things. But transparency counts for a lot in this community, so I'd rather talk about it at the risk of scaring some people than ignore it.

Not only will we be working on the aforementioned, but hundreds of other bits that caught our eye during development that couldn't be justified within the product scope...at that time. For us, the excitement of release is closing this chapter of development, and starting a whole new one. Everyday the list of "OOOOH LETS DO THIS" grows. Anyway, less talk more show on that front, we're excited.

Now there's been lots of talk about how we run our systems external to the sim, which we do, however we also use the same system as FSUIPC and Aerosoft's VGDS to automatically handle that side of things for you. Provided MSFS runs exe.xml (which it has been struggling to do on occasion since SU9 - Asobo are aware but we're not holding release when it's working for the majority) you can simply load MSFS and select our A320 like any other, go fly and apart from a moment after load where the internal and external systems perform a momentary handshake, it's like any other aircraft. If MSFS decides not to use it's own exe.xml, just open the Fenix App at any point before or after loading the sim and it'll handle the rest - nothing else required. The advantages to this method are plenty, such as allowing you to select which piece of hardware to render the displays on to ease a performance bottleneck specific to the system it's running on. We don't deal with serial numbers, 2FA, emails with verification links etc: just download the installer and login with your account details you used to purchase the product. So long as you don't completely uninstall Fenix, you shouldn't be prompted to login or do anything else outside MSFS again. There's two things to keep in mind about this system: 1. it requires an internet connection on login, but will happily function offline as long as the Fenix App is open. 2. To keep it this simple, we do tie each license to one machine at this time, but as soon as our colleagues in Ukraine are back up and running we'll be expanding this out to 3 machines and generally improving the process. For what it's worth, you can swap install PCs as many times as you like, just ping support and they'll reset it immediately, no questions asked.

Lastly, we'll try to give as much warning as we can when we have a release date & time. We're feeling confident about our infrastructure but I'm not promising any steak dinners.

-Aamir

 

As both a developer (not related to flight simulation) and a flight simulation enthusiast, I've been watching the Fenix A320 project since it began and have been impressed with what the team has accomplished. Aamir's communication, especially the quoted post above, has been the most impressive aspect of the project. He is doing a fantastic job setting appropriate expectations ahead of launch, which is a hallmark of excellent product management. False expectations are so insidious, they can cause customers to perceive even the most successful rollout as a failure and have been a key cause of failure I've seen in numerous projects over the years. For better and worse, development paradigms have shifted over the years to speed delivery in response to a more competitive market. The initial release will always have some room for improvement, that's a feature, not a bug. Aamir is already opening a dialogue with the community on what is potentially on the roadmap, which further cements my positive opinion on Fenix. I'm looking forward to this launch with great excitement.

7 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

What kind of PCs are you buying that need to be repaired regularly? 

I'm currently all MSI, but not for much longer. 

I'm now on my 5th replacement GPU fan for my main one. 

That pesky MSFS.

As am I.

Nice to be back on topic instead of foraging for fickle fodder.

I think we're going to have her just in time for the weekend folks! I'm counting down the hours now, should be less than 48 😂

2 hours ago, Shack95 said:

It‘s silly, I know, but I‘d actually like animated passengers. Every time I park at a FlyTampa airport and especially Aerosoft‘s Brussels (my absolute favourite at the moment) I‘m surprised at how much animated people add to the overall atmosphere. Now if we could see them board the plane and take their seats in the cabin, wouldn‘t that be cool? (Or at least board and then sit, that would probably be easier to implement). I know it‘s not that important, but It’d still be nice to have as an option.

Train Simulator historically has a lot of virtual passengers waiting, boarding, and sitting. It's not taxing on frames when this happens in Train Sim World. It's not taxing on frames in GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption either, when pax board trains. In the modern age, this is absolutely doable. Other things I'd love to see:

Expanded Failures:

• The A320 is notorious for its "bent" nosewheel that sometimes gets twisted to a 90 degree angle during approach. That would be cool.
• The Coolsky DC-9 also had a lot of neat failures, like smoke in the cabin/cockpit that you could sort of mitigate by opening a window, which would restore what you could see.
• PMDG is famous for implementing brake wear, where a bunch of high speed RTO's or aggressive braking will eventually cause the brake shoes to deteriorate.
• Other high fidelity aircraft also keep a note of the fuel temperatures, and depending on the type of jet a, allow your fuel to freeze in the tanks.
• Robust icing simulation that really just punishes you for not using anti-ice, or de-icing.
• Bird strike that results in a cracked windscreen, or just a cracked windscreen failure. Happens more often than you'd think, and it makes visual approaches super interesting.

Visual Features:

• Bugs on the windshield. Pretty common feature in P3D, and added to the immersion.
• St.Elmo's Fire. Would also be super cool.

Sim Features:

• Persistent cockpit. The switches are how you left them last time you used the plane.

Someone is going to tell me that's all unnecessary, and they'd be right lol. Still, I'd love to see it someday in a sim.

7 hours ago, hatchna said:

I can certainly understand the need for licensing and hopefully mitigating piracy. I do hope that the increase to 3 machine licenses won’t take too long. My hope was to put this on my PC, as well as my son’s PC, as he is aspiring to become a pilot someday and is as excited as I am for this release.

Hope you figure this out. I went though this with my kids and built him a PC so he could enjoy flightsim as much as myself but it turns out I was the only one really interested to begin with. When it came to planes, thankfully I purchased the good ones and he used the free ones. Now if he was seriously interested or in flight training then I would look at getting him the PMDG or something to that level to further his education. 

Buddy of mine also had the same wishes that his son would enjoy MSFS2020. Got him all setup with 2020 and a new xbox only to have him go back to his other games a week later. 

If I was to do it again and set up my kid up in 2020. I would start him off in the FBW A320 to learn the basic and flows. If I saw that he was definitely into the simulation and wanted to go further into the systems then I would accommodate his interest. 

It's a tough call, good luck in your outcome.

Did I correctly read or see somewhere that the Fenix can leverage the onboard GPU for its own purposes, as well as using the discrete GPU? 
 

If so, does anyone yet have any insight they can share into what effect this has on (presumably) performance?

@WestAir,

How about when you crash, your PSU goes up in flames? 😉

Edited May 19, 20224 yr by Ray Proudfoot
Long quoted message removed and replaced with tag for recipient.

1 hour ago, Hyperfocal said:

As both a developer (not related to flight simulation) and a flight simulation enthusiast, I've been watching the Fenix A320 project since it began and have been impressed with what the team has accomplished. Aamir's communication, especially the quoted post above, has been the most impressive aspect of the project. He is doing a fantastic job setting appropriate expectations ahead of launch, which is a hallmark of excellent product management. False expectations are so insidious, they can cause customers to perceive even the most successful rollout as a failure and have been a key cause of failure I've seen in numerous projects over the years. For better and worse, development paradigms have shifted over the years to speed delivery in response to a more competitive market. The initial release will always have some room for improvement, that's a feature, not a bug. Aamir is already opening a dialogue with the community on what is potentially on the roadmap, which further cements my positive opinion on Fenix. I'm looking forward to this launch with great excitement.

Hear hear! Software development and delivery paradigms have indeed shifted, and finally we're seeing these changes coming into the flight sim world in a much needed way. Team Fenix IMHO is a perfect complement to team Asobo, as they both share the same philosophies, and a much welcome set of philosophies at that. Goes without saying, despite all the times we berate Asobo for at-times poor QA or regressions, overall they've achieved a very impressive feat in just under two years.. to flesh out a flight sim platform with all the core capabilities in visuals, aerodynamics, sound, weather, etc etc that enables such progress we're seeing from add-on devs like Milviz, JF, PMDG, and now Fenix that raises the bar even higher. And like I keep saying, these are just the beginnings, a full half of 2022 still remains and then beyond, to look forward to more core sim progress as well as add-ons progress!

Edited May 19, 20224 yr by lwt1971

As someone eagerly awaiting the release, may I gently ask that we please stay on topic in this thread (the Fenix NDA lifting, Fenix information and the Fenix release announcement)?

Thanks for considering before posting on this thread… there are countless others to choose from.

I check this one often with bated breath, and ‘it’s oft for naught.

Ta- c