FENIX NDA lifted at 1200Z!!!!!!!!!

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

1 hour ago, nbhall68 said:

Well I just got the PMDG 737 for MSFS for free.  And I still have another $30 credit left over.  So if they're "profiteering"...they're not very good at it.

They already have your money. You must have forgotten about that. 
 

Secondly, think about all those folks who didnt take advantage of that sale way back when. Its going to cost them $50 more to buy those same two variants.

 

Pmdg are geniuses when it comes squeezing flightsim folk out of their money. Flightsim folk are moths to a bug zapper. They don’t care how much it will hurt, they will do anything to get their hands on what PMDG offers.

[The Flight Level 2,113]

53 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Just got a chance to watch this... good lord the details and depth of simulation, and this is just scratching the surface! Some stuff I caught:

- brake fans actually simulated and animated (can go look at wheels close up to see the fans spinning inside)
- accumulator can be recharged by closing cargo doors
- ailerons drooping down over time due to hydraulics pressure drop while aircraft parked
- when apu goes on packs turn off automatically but if engine aren't started after some time packs come back on
- realistic apu bleed and keeps running for a bit  to cool itself, realistic time taken for this
- realistic multi-led strobe light blinking sequences
- sun visors for cockpit front/side windows realistic opacity and color
- flaps realistically buffeting in wind to varying degrees depending on flap position!, 320simpilot said he's not seen this before in any sim, I don't recall either
- etc

Yes, I watched a good portion also. All this with good frame rates. Goes to show you what is possible with excellent coding in a complex airplane with beautiful textures!

[edu2703 232]

The more I learn about the Fenix A320, the more I am amazed at the attention to the smallest details. Details that are largely overlooked by other devs, either out of laziness or lack of will.

I once had a nasty argument with a certain dev (who I won't mention by name) who told me that wingflex is unimportant and refusing to improve it. And to see that the Fenix A320 even has realistic flap buffeting, depending on the flap position, is truly witnessing an evolution.

The time will come when only Airbus engineers will be able to come up with a list describing what the real A320 has or does that is not modeled on the Fenix. And I can guarantee it won't be a long list.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,873]

28 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Pmdg are geniuses when it comes squeezing flightsim folk out of their money. Flightsim folk are moths to a bug zapper. They don’t care how much it will hurt, they will do anything to get their hands on what PMDG offers.

Well, they certainly are geniuses, because they managed to work out MSFS has a larger user base, therefore they can charge less for the product.  Just about every major release on MSFS has so far come in at a price lower than what most of us expected because of that larger user base.  Just flight were just a few dollars over what people expected so had to lower the price in response to criticism.

[Malaromane 421]

3 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

As this is my first airliner for 10 years, could someone recommend a pushback tool for the Fenix A320 please.  Is there any other app you would recommend for this 10 year GA guy?

There is a pushback function built into the Fenix EFB itself so perhaps you won't need *any* addon (at least at first). Since this will be my first airliner as well, I'm just going to stick with the built-in pushback unless or until I feel like I need something "better".

[nbhall68 106]

1 minute ago, ahsmatt7 said:

They already have your money. You must have forgotten about that. 
 

Secondly, think about all those folks who didnt take advantage of that sale way back when. Its going to cost them $50 more to buy those same two variants.

 

Pmdg are geniuses when it comes squeezing flightsim folk out of their money. Flightsim folk are moths to a bug zapper. They don’t care how much it will hurt, they will do anything to get their hands on what PMDG offers.

No, I didn't forget...I just don't care.  I think that flightsim developers SHOULD make money.  As should anyone for their work.  When I think about how many hours, or even years of entertainment that I've gotten for a lousy $70...I can't think of another value proposition on Earth that even comes close to matching that.

The PMDG 737 costs $70 US, the Fenix A320 costs roughly $60 US.  Lol, okay fine...on both counts.  Although their presentation may differ somewhat, I think both developers are proud of their work (as they should be) and I enjoy their enthusiasm.

Anyway, very much looking forward to a release date for the Fenix A320!  

[MrBitstFlyer 3,873]

5 minutes ago, Malaromane said:

There is a pushback function built into the Fenix EFB itself so perhaps you won't need *any* addon (at least at first). Since this will be my first airliner as well, I'm just going to stick with the built-in pushback unless or until I feel like I need something "better".

Good shout, I'll use that first!

[VBHB 298]

So when's it out?

[edu2703 232]

2 minutes ago, VBHB said:

So when's it out?

When it's ready™

[bendead 1,085]

Update from Aamir on Discord : 

Final release candidate on it's way to the tester, if nothing is broken we should have the aircraft in a day or two 😁

Edited May 19, 2022 by bendead

[Gate99 246]

1 minute ago, bendead said:

Update from Aamir on Discord : 

Final release candidate on it's way to the tester, if nothing is broken we should have the aircraft in a day or two 😁

YES!!!  thank you for sharing this.

Mark

 

[lwt1971 7,400]

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

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by lwt1971

[snapshot21 254]

13 minutes ago, bendead said:

Update from Aamir on Discord : 

Final release candidate on it's way to the tester, if nothing is broken we should have the aircraft in a day or two 😁

Not exactly, they said the testing of the RC is expected to be a day or two.

But the release itself is TBD. Aamir said they will announce in advance if they are confident in a release date and time.

[NZ255 309]

Mmmmm transparency 

[odourboy 1,289]

7 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

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.

Ugh. This sounds like the old SSW way of controlling piracy. It was cumbersome and thankfully, after years of grumbling and lost business, they finally canned it.