1 hour ago, UAL4life said:

because ini is not known for their performance lol

They're working on it. One of their goals according to the last big news drop they did is to get better at performance optimization.

The newest A320NeoV2 update released I got a 15FPS improvement, going from ~55-60 to 70-75.

 

  

36 minutes ago, outermarker said:

Who knows if iniBuilds would have included the OANS or BTV functionality

ini already confirmed ONAS and BTV support a while ago. It's in the FAQ:

https://forum.inibuilds.com/topic/23573-inibuilds-a350-airliner-in-development-faq/

It was also confirmed by devs on Discord back in December 2023 after it was announced.

Edited November 3, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

14 minutes ago, micstatic said:

FBW has done a great job on the A380.  Especially for a plane that is in alpha and has a long road ahead of it.  But are you kidding?  It's most certainly not on fenix standards yet.  

Kidding why? Can’t see fluid quantity moving when Fenix moves. Gravity gear would extend way too slow on the Fenix and would extend even if plane is reverted. Gear system is all physically modeled on FBW. All control actuators are physically modeled as hydraulic actuators which correct hinge torque, and if you shut aileron control you’ll see surfaces going up sucked by lower pressure over wing in the FBW. Which is not simulated at all on Fenix. Looong is the list. 

1 minute ago, Crocket said:

Kidding why? Can’t see fluid quantity moving when Fenix moves. Gravity gear would extend way too slow on the Fenix and would extend even if plane is reverted. Gear system is all physically modeled on FBW. All control actuators are physically modeled as hydraulic actuators which correct hinge torque, and if you shut aileron control you’ll see surfaces going up sucked by lower pressure over wing in the FBW. Which is not simulated at all on Fenix. Looong is the list. 

failures, rnav approach's?  I mean the list goes on and on.  Not a knock on FBW

1 minute ago, micstatic said:

failures, rnav approach's?  I mean the list goes on and on.  Not a knock on FBW

Failures are available in FBW, and there you go on features that are not yet implemented on FBW side, which I of course agree. I’m talking about implemented features that are generally an order of magnitude deeper simulated. But you have to know a lot on the plane to even notice those details. 

3 minutes ago, Crocket said:

Failures are available in FBW, and there you go on features that are not yet implemented on FBW side, which I of course agree. I’m talking about implemented features that are generally an order of magnitude deeper simulated. But you have to know a lot on the plane to even notice those details. 

It's fair to not judge them at this stage.  But it's still not available on the neo yet all this time later.  Rnav to me is far more important than the other things you mentioned.  But that's me

The FBW A380 is a good plane and i am sure every agrees on that.

What bothers me is that "Study Level" is i find it unnecessary as a mandatory to create a plane for flightsim.  Not every flightsimmers wants to study every thing the plane it has!  Its a portion of the flightsim population wants it but not all of them as everyone would prefer a good reliable plane with good sounds and gets to point A to B with good simulations and integration into services like Simbrief and Navigraph.

This "Study Level" takes a lot of time, and I can see this types of planes can be a benefit for individuals wanting to prepare themselves when getting an actual type rating for their flying career.

And time is precious, having waited for 4 years for the FBW A380 is a long time, granted that it is a freeware and they were volunteers for putting this project together.  Another disappointment is Bluebird's 757/767, which we don't know when it will be available 🙂

And thanks to the internet age, developers are afraid of any negative publicity if their product isn't up to the market expectations and then affect the sales of the product. For example Aerosoft A330.

We are fortunate to have PMDG developing the Hi FI planes, they are setting the standards for the flightsim development, its their niche, but this is also putting pressure on other developers.  Whatever others are doing like inibuilds, they have a timeline and targets to meet, and we just have to accept the fact that some products are cater to different market segments.   

I think, flight sim is a great product for individuals who likes to use it to fulfil their dreams of flying, or to kill times, or do whatever they intent to do, but i do think the planes itself should not be a limitation to selections.  I just think it should have a more wider variety of planes available by now after 4 years of MSFS2020, but this progress is rather slow because of the "study level" mentality.  Plus with 2024, it will just impact the roll out of more planes when developers are trying to get compatibilities for their existing products.

Just my 2 cents....

Study Level is silly nonsense term, how do you even define it?

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Now that the FBW A380 is out, the consensus I get from many people is that the fidelity of the FBW A380 is quite good and can be easily flown on VATSIM from A to B.  Of course, the FBW A380 is not "study level" at the moment.

Having said that, iniBuilds is known for releasing pretty good fidelity level planes in MSFS, albeit they are probably not "study level" to the extent that PMDG or Fenix planes are in MSFS (I know people have a different definition of "study level," but for the sake of this post, I refer to "study level" as being at least PMDG's level, or above it, such as Fenix). 

The aircraft iniBuilds develop for the MSFS default fleet might not be "study level" or as high a fidelity compared to the likes of Fenix, PMDG, etc but their payware birds are pretty high fidelity and stands up there with the best of them IMO (their A300 being the only airliner example for now I guess). Their A350 will be a good indicator of high a fidelity they're able to achieve in a modern payware airliner and then set the stage for their A380 release in 2025 or later. But by that time the FBW A380 might be compelling enough for some to not need the ini A380, will have to wait and see I guess.
 

Edited November 3, 20241 yr by lwt1971

@avistudent  There are tons of non "study level" planes available now though.  Also a good amount of high level planes.  I'm not disappointed by the numbers we have available at all

13 minutes ago, micstatic said:

It's fair to not judge them at this stage.  But it's still not available on the neo yet all this time later.  Rnav to me is far more important than the other things you mentioned.  But that's me

And Fenix is feature complete and great, no doubt about this!

But I'm just always a bit sad to have this general feeling that "FBW is lower fidelity of course because it's free", while tons of stuff is simulated way deeper than anything else you could find in any other sim (LEVEL D included because that's not the point of even a level D to simulate this stuff).

A small exemple of the interaction of a physically modeled hydraulic PTU system, electrical pumps  and mechanical gear system using rigid body physics:

Of course you'll have aerodynamic forces impacting gears, resulting in sequence always different, you can also help gravity extension by doing steep turns, as stated in SoP of the real plane.

And of course the 380 is getting all of this ported into it, now or in the close future 🙂

Hope you'll enjoy it anyway 😉

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

That depends. There are certain elements of the avionics that have been missing from FBW's offerings for years now and we saw little progress in these parts.

Such as Constraints (in the case of the A380 also the Step Climbs), Fix Page, Non Precision approaches. Sure their aircraft function fine without it, but these are all helpfull planning tools for the pilots that the Payware offerings usually have. 

At this point I'm not sure which of these will ever be implemented, considering how long they spend on perfecting other parts.

Could not have said it better myself .. I pretty much refrained from commenting during the A380 release due to the whole positive vibes everyone is having with the A380 but i have occasionally asked about progress on the non precision approach aspect of FBW development and it gets ignored  so i just go back to my corner and carry on flying other aircraft that have these options modeled. I guess for these things i am a "single issue" customer/end user. I don't want to be flying ILS approaches all day and the RNAV workaround provided frankly is not RNAV so... Ive said my piece. Glad everyone else is enjoying the product though. 

20 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

The aircraft iniBuilds develop for the MSFS default fleet might not be "study level" or as high a fidelity compared to the likes of Fenix, PMDG, etc but their payware birds are pretty high fidelity and stands up there with the best of them IMO (their A300 being the only airliner example for now I guess). Their A350 will be a good indicator of high a fidelity they're able to achieve in a modern payware airliner and then set the stage for their A380 release in 2025 or later. But by that time the FBW A380 might be compelling enough for some to not need the ini A380, will have to wait and see I guess.
 

Yeah, I agree. iniBuilds makes very good fidelity airliners for MSFS 👍.  It's this reason that Aerosoft gave up on their A330 and released it as it was, because they know the iniBuilds A330 that comes free for MSFS 2024 will be way better.

Edited November 3, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

32 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Study Level is silly nonsense term, how do you even define it?

So I was out of flight simulation for about 10 years after the last patch of FSX, up until the release of MSFS 2020.  But according to this Reddit comment, it was PMDG that coined the term, "study level"?  I can't verify if PMDG did or did not coin the term "study level" as I was not in flight simulation at the time, but maybe others can confirm the term "study level" got popularized at the time that PMDG started to use it:

 

So as I mentioned in my original comment, "study level" is at least PMDG's level of fidelity.  Since it seems PMDG coined this term, and it appears their products have largely maintained a certain level of fidelity from P3D across to MSFS, for the purpose of this thread, "study level" means at least PMDG's level of fidelity or above their level of fidelity (ie. Fenix). 

Anyways, sometimes it's best to return to the original source, where a certain terminology was created. If it's true that PMDG coined the term "study level," then I think it's fair to compare the level of fidelity to PMDG's fidelity level.

 

Edited November 3, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

20 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Study Level is silly nonsense term, how do you even define it?

I think you can define it -- probably even multiple ways -- but I don't think that it's an interesting criterion to most simmers, whichever way you define it.

I think the original idea behind the term "study level" was to imply "could be used by a pilot studying for a type rating". That's a pretty squishy definition though. Even a pure 3D model of the cockpit, without any systems simulation, could be used to study for part of the type rating -- namely to become familiar with the cockpit and practice flows. Indeed, people studying for type ratings use paper posters of the cockpit for exactly this purpose. Even some of the most derided addons would clear this bar -- which makes it not very interesting.

A more interesting definition for "study level" would be "faithfully replicates all of the behaviors described in documents available to a pilot (FCTM, FCOM, etc.)". I think this is what many people think of when they talk about "study level". But this criterion alone does not make for an interesting addons. An addon with the most perfunctory sound set, with the blandest of textures (if indeed any textures at all), with none of what we like to call "immersion" could meet this definition of "study level". Hardly anyone would buy it.

So while I think it's possible to define "study level", I don't think it's a very useful concept for evaluating an addon. At the end of the day, each of us approaches an addon with different expectations. Each of us has certain "must-have" features and certain "meh" features, and that list is different for everyone. Hence the endless -- and fruitless -- disagreements about which addon is better than which other addon...

14 minutes ago, martinboehme said:

I think you can define it -- probably even multiple ways -- but I don't think that it's an interesting criterion to most simmers, whichever way you define it.

I think the original idea behind the term "study level" was to imply "could be used by a pilot studying for a type rating". That's a pretty squishy definition though. Even a pure 3D model of the cockpit, without any systems simulation, could be used to study for part of the type rating -- namely to become familiar with the cockpit and practice flows. Indeed, people studying for type ratings use paper posters of the cockpit for exactly this purpose. Even some of the most derided addons would clear this bar -- which makes it not very interesting.

A more interesting definition for "study level" would be "faithfully replicates all of the behaviors described in documents available to a pilot (FCTM, FCOM, etc.)". I think this is what many people think of when they talk about "study level". But this criterion alone does not make for an interesting addons. An addon with the most perfunctory sound set, with the blandest of textures (if indeed any textures at all), with none of what we like to call "immersion" could meet this definition of "study level". Hardly anyone would buy it.

So while I think it's possible to define "study level", I don't think it's a very useful concept for evaluating an addon. At the end of the day, each of us approaches an addon with different expectations. Each of us has certain "must-have" features and certain "meh" features, and that list is different for everyone. Hence the endless -- and fruitless -- disagreements about which addon is better than which other addon...

Thank you.. which is why i have developed  an almost "clinical" way of evaluating releases from devs nowadays.. If it has my needs ill buy/use it. If it doesn't .. well it just doesn't ... for me of course. May be the bees knees for others though.  Ive been on both sides of the coin .. You have some on here that will nitpick at PMDG over all sorts of stuff meanwhile i go simming and on the other hand every time FBW comes up im scouring the thread looking to see if they have finally implemented my personal must haves... Its an individual thing to varying degrees.