Free one? FBW A320. Or, if you want a heavy, try the Headwind A330-900. It has the same FBW avionics (and the same $0 price).

Edited January 26, 20233 yr by Luis Hernandez

11 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Free one? FBW A320. Or, if you want a heavy, try the Headwind A330-900. It has the same FBW avionics (and the same $0 price).

As an aside, does anyone know how many -900 freighters there are?  The only thing I can dig up is Hawaiian Airlines getting some for Amazon.

 

6 hours ago, BrammyH said:

As an aside, does anyone know how many -900 freighters there are?

IRL, until your reply, I thought the number was 0, but I'm willing to stand corrected.

1 hour ago, Luis Hernandez said:

IRL, until your reply, I thought the number was 0, but I'm willing to stand corrected.

So, it looks like the -900 is based off the -300 fuselage. So, I can get away with liveries for the -300.

Anyone who is very familiar w/ both FBW and Fenix:  how do they compare for frame rate per se?  I understand Fenix is smooth but one article suggested about 25% more demandng than FBW which would be too much for my sys.

42 minutes ago, Noel said:

Anyone who is very familiar w/ both FBW and Fenix:  how do they compare for frame rate per se?

It depends on your system specs and sim settings. If you lock your FPS at 30 you may not notice much difference between them but if you have your FPS unlimited or at greater than 30 FPS you will  proably get somewhat higher FPS with the FBW. On the down side you may experience stutters from time to time with the FBW.

The Fenix has some options you can tweak to run it's external process rendering on your CPU or GPU that can help FPS. On my system it runs best with the CPU option. 

I see where are you coming from, Noel. I've always felt the FBW lighter. However, this is because I had to offload the Fenix processing to the GPU. I see your 9900K CPU has an integrated GPU (unlike my 5600X). You may offload all the Fenix processing there instead, and you won't be using neither CPU or GPU cycles.

2 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

I see where are you coming from, Noel. I've always felt the FBW lighter. However, this is because I had to offload the Fenix processing to the GPU. I see your 9900K CPU has an integrated GPU (unlike my 5600X). You may offload all the Fenix processing there instead, and you won't be using neither CPU or GPU cycles.

Hi Luis,

The FBW runs very well save the random short hard pauses during taxi and generally less capable of delivering perfect frame times but it's not bad, it's just not perfect and overall in terms of frame rate it's on a par w/ PMDG 738 for me as I'm setup.  I watched the Blue Simulations review of Fenix and it's very tempting for sure!  I'm told they have found what they think is the culprit for these hard pauses, which in DX11 are pretty modest--about 1 to 2 of them during taxi on a complex airport seems typical.  VNAV functionality (managed flight) is working quite well w/ the FBW now as well.  Despite the accolades for Fenix the FBW is pretty impressive so not quite sure it would be worth the swap just yet for me--some stuff may be wasted on me as a user perhaps w/ the Fenix. 

Pretty cool about the offloading to local GPU--so with this option, how might it compare against PMDG/FBW?

I'm afraid I don't know: I feel the 737 is a lot smoother than Fenix, but I haven't flown the FBW (or the Headwind A330) since I purchased the 737 in the Marketplace. Maybe others can chime in. 

30 minutes ago, Noel said:

so with this option, how might it compare against PMDG/FBW?

I neither know, because my 5600X can't take advantage of this. I expect your 9900K/3080Ti usage will decrease when compared with PMDG/FBW, BUT I'm sure your CPU temperatures will raise a bit. I hope someone else can give a definitive answer.

32 minutes ago, Noel said:

which in DX11 are pretty modest

You run MSFS in DX11, right? I'm undecided between DX11 and DX12...

 

 

17 minutes ago, Luis Hernandez said:

You run MSFS in DX11, right? I'm undecided between DX11 and DX12...

Only since I read on FBW's site DX11 can be better--I've been using DX12 for many months and fortunately the PMDG 738 runs fine in DX11.