I am so  tempted to buy the Fenix A320, the price is excellent and the plane looks spectacular. However, I do have the PMDG 737 and love it. I have read a lot on this forum about how great the FBW A320 is and I am really wondering if it makes sense for a primarily 737 guy to buy the Fenix if the FBW would suit my needs. I know that the Fenix is the superior bird, but just how is the FBW, and I am just curious if anyone would recommend I just stick with the FBW. I haven't really flown the FBW and have not yet purchased the Fenix. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Cheers, Pete

Life’s too short.. Just get it dude. You sound like you’ve seen enough of it to call it spectacular so just get flying it my man. Personally I think it’s the best add on aircraft I’ve flown and if you want something that will be teaching you something new in a year from now go get it 🙂

 

3 minutes ago, Carts85 said:

Life’s too short.. Just get it dude. You sound like you’ve seen enough of it to call it spectacular so just get flying it my man. Personally I think it’s the best add on aircraft I’ve flown and if you want something that will be teaching you something new in a year from now go get it 🙂

 

I probably will, I know in the end I can't help myself!

Cheers, Pete

If you want to fly a fully featured airbus right now, the Fenix is an easy choice. The FBW on the other hand gets daily updates with a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon - and contrary to popular opinion, the team does aim for the the same amount of realism - if not more. It will just take a bit more time.

For casual flying, the differences aren't huge right now.

In the end it's all about how much enjoyment you'll get out of a 60$ addon, and that's something only you can answer for yourself.

24 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

I am so  tempted to buy the Fenix A320, the price is excellent and the plane looks spectacular. However, I do have the PMDG 737 and love it. I have read a lot on this forum about how great the FBW A320 is and I am really wondering if it makes sense for a primarily 737 guy to buy the Fenix if the FBW would suit my needs. I know that the Fenix is the superior bird, but just how is the FBW, and I am just curious if anyone would recommend I just stick with the FBW. I haven't really flown the FBW and have not yet purchased the Fenix. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Cheers, Pete

If you are already familiar with the FBW you will feel right at home in the Fenix. Both are great aircraft. It wouldn't hurt to try out the FBW first. Get familiar, do a few flights, get the hang of it, then try out the Fenix. You will appreciate the attention to detail that Fenix put into their aircraft.  In my opinion the Fenix EFB alone is worth the price of admission. If there was an award for best flight sim EFB, Fenix would win. Its super intuitive and a joy to use.

Edited May 20, 20224 yr by Bnash00

Just now, Bnash00 said:

If you are already familiar with the FBW you will feel right at home in the Fenix. Both are great aircraft. It wouldn't hurt to try out the FBW first. Get familiar, do a few lights, get the hang of it, then try out the Fenix. You will appreciate the attention to detail that Fenix put into their aircraft.  In my opinion the Fenix EFB alone is worth the price of admission. If there was an award for best flight sim EFB, Fenix would win. Its supper intuitive and a joy to use.

Funny you should mention that, I literally just installed the FBW and will do some flights today. I do have the Aerosoft A320 package for P3dv5 and I flew it a decent amount, so if it is similar to that I don't expect to have any serious issues.

Cheers, Pete

Also purchased fenix at this moment looking forward to compare against fslabs 

45 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

I know that the Fenix is the superior bird, but just how is the FBW, and I am just curious if anyone would recommend I just stick with the FBW.

The FBW A320 Neo is really, really good. Been using it since release which I think is more than a year now (perhaps a year and a half?). Anyway it's such a great addon for learning the Airbus systems. Just flew it yesterday in between some Fenix flights, and had a great time. The EFB also has an excellent EFB (called the "FlyPad"), and operation of both the EFB and the MCDU ("FMC") is very intuitive (Simbrief import, loading of fuel and payload, requesting weather). Highly recommended. 

For casuals, def go for the FBW. I don't understand why anyone would tell you to fork out the $50 for a study level aircraft when a free alternative for you is available. 

The upside for this approach is that you can always get the Fenix later on

53 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

Funny you should mention that, I literally just installed the FBW and will do some flights today. I do have the Aerosoft A320 package for P3dv5 and I flew it a decent amount, so if it is similar to that I don't expect to have any serious issues.

I was going to suggest you try the FBW A320 anyway - seeing as it's free! I have the same problem, but the other way round! I've been using the FBW A320 since day one and have now bought the PMDG 737. I'm cash severely limited, so buying the Fenix A320 would be a big step for me (and do I *really* need both?).

The FBW is a *superb* add-on - produced by an amazing collaboration of dozens of "developers" - all of which seem incredibly patient, helpful and friendly. I'd feel rather guilty if I simply used the FBW to transition to the Fenix!

Well, I officially give up on the FBW. I have been trying for two hours to get the plane to load, and it just will not. Even tried the stable version first, and then the developmental version. The screen just sits with the progress bar at full and that is the end. I am not sure what the issue is with this, since I have not problems besides this plane. I was even flying the default A320 earlier today with no issues. The FBW just won't load.

Cheers, Pete

5 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

Well, I officially give up on the FBW. I have been trying for two hours to get the plane to load, and it just will not. Even tried the stable version first, and then the developmental version. The screen just sits with the progress bar at full and that is the end. I am not sure what the issue is with this, since I have not problems besides this plane. I was even flying the default A320 earlier today with no issues. The FBW just won't load.

Cheers, Pete

That's odd, it will take a while to load the first time, probably about the same amount it took your system to load the PMDG the first time.  If it's taking longer than that, maybe try uninstalling from their installer app.  Then picking a version and installing again.  Maybe something got corrupted and it's not removing/replacing correctly if you just switched versions in the installer.

 

edit:  Switching versions, or updates to the versions you're on will also increase loading times.

Edited May 20, 20224 yr by flyinion

4 minutes ago, flyinion said:

That's odd, it will take a while to load the first time, probably about the same amount it took your system to load the PMDG the first time.  If it's taking longer than that, maybe try uninstalling from their installer app.  Then picking a version and installing again.  Maybe something got corrupted and it's not removing/replacing correctly if you just switched versions in the installer.

 

edit:  Switching versions, or updates to the versions you're on will also increase loading times.

Yeah that’s what I did. The stranger part is that even after I uninstall, it messed up everything else, and even loading other aircraft kept crashing before the plane loaded. I’m honestly afraid to try a third time.

Cheers, Pete

On 5/20/2022 at 11:18 PM, PilotPete99 said:

Well, I officially give up on the FBW. I have been trying for two hours to get the plane to load, and it just will not. Even tried the stable version first, and then the developmental version. The screen just sits with the progress bar at full and that is the end. I am not sure what the issue is with this, since I have not problems besides this plane. I was even flying the default A320 earlier today with no issues. The FBW just won't load.

Cheers, Pete

Am new here - I was browsing through this post after spending some enjoyable hours in the FBW A320. I also ran into this problem and lost an evening trying to figure it out, installing and uninstalling loads of times. Turns out that many months ago I'd also installed the Marketplace version of the FBW A320 then forgotten about it. This created some kind of conflict when I installed from the FBW installer, and left me hung at the end of a full progress bar. I uninstalled both FBW and Marketplace version (uninstalled that from in-game), then reinstalled FBW dev version and it worked first time - albeit with a slight delay on first use while it does some compilation stuff.

On 5/20/2022 at 2:55 PM, gdjak said:

If you want to fly a fully featured airbus right now, the Fenix is an easy choice. The FBW on the other hand gets daily updates with a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon - and contrary to popular opinion, the team does aim for the the same amount of realism - if not more. It will just take a bit more time.

For casual flying, the differences aren't huge right now.

In the end it's all about how much enjoyment you'll get out of a 60$ addon, and that's something only you can answer for yourself.

Which version of the FBW was integrated with the world flight planner?  Was it the Dev version I thought I read somewhere?  What is wrong with the Dev version?