Fenix A320 Sharklets released

[SierraDelta]

A new blog post by Aamir yesterday - impressive:

https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-15_fenix_a32x_by_the_numbers/

[rick celik]

Really amazing and interesting the level Fenix is taking it. At this point, every Airbus should be done by Fenix. 
 

After they’re done with the busses, would love a Fenix a220. 

Edited November 16, 2024 by rick celik

[Skytatoo]

16 minutes ago, rick celik said:

Really amazing and interesting the level Fenix is taking it. At this point, every Airbus should be done by Fenix. 
 

After they’re done with the busses, would love a Fenix a220. 

I hope at least ini's 350 comes close to the Fenix's high standards. 

[Fiorentoni]

1 hour ago, rick celik said:

Really amazing and interesting the level Fenix is taking it. At this point, every Airbus should be done by Fenix. 
 

After they’re done with the busses, would love a Fenix a220. 

Yep. I'd actually take *any* aircraft from them. It's the complete experience

[Claudius_]

 

3 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

A new blog post by Aamir yesterday - impressive:

https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-15_fenix_a32x_by_the_numbers/

Since last patches I'm not satisfied regardind the flight model, the number are there but the feeling is wrong from my point of view: something needs to be adjusted on the inertia when rolling and pitching, and it flares like a glider at landing if you approach with a wrong angle. Take offs appear to be ok, but it's a liner and the flight model isn't so important.

[Farlis]

46 minutes ago, Claudius_ said:

 

Since last patches I'm not satisfied regardind the flight model, the number are there but the feeling is wrong from my point of view: something needs to be adjusted on the inertia when rolling and pitching, and it flares like a glider at landing if you approach with a wrong angle. Take offs appear to be ok, but it's a liner and the flight model isn't so important.

And what do you base this on other than your feeling? I have seen real Airbus Pilots fly this thing and saying that inertia feels spot on.

[Claudius_]

3 minutes ago, Farlis said:

And what do you base this on other than your feeling? I have seen real Airbus Pilots fly this thing and saying that inertia feels spot on.

And you are basing your feeling on the real Airbus Pilots exclusively? I don't do that because the real pilots are often in conflict of interest, and I like to judge the software from my experience as a simmer. The Fenix A320 is a good software after all,  it's updated regularly, but the flight model on the first versions, before the "externalization" was better than now.

[lwt1971]

5 hours ago, SierraDelta said:

A new blog post by Aamir yesterday - impressive:

https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-15_fenix_a32x_by_the_numbers/

Very impressive indeed.. gotta love these kind of behind-the-scenes deep dives they do. I think a lot of simmers who pontificate on the "feel" of flight in an Airbus don't really know about or take into account the FBW nature of airbus, and likely don't use proper controllers and have them calibrated properly enough to truly assess. Can perhaps only go by the opinions/reviews of IRL Airbus pilots who're also experienced simmers, and most of them conclude Fenix is the gold standard for airbus simulations. Can't say this enough, the new blood in the dev community like these guys and ini/Asobo/etc have been a massive boon for flight simulation, thankfully moving us forward from the stagnation of pre-2020 simming.

Looking forward to seeing what Fenix can do with the new flight dynamics and ground physics capabilities in MSFS 2024.

----------

We've been working on various refinements to the existing product stack, and one area we repeatedly see a lot of confusion or misconceptions in is the flight/physics model - also known as the flight dynamics. There are two parts to the flight dynamics in any simulator: the core simulator's FDE (flight dynamics engine) that processes the aircraft's flight model data, and the individual profile/flight model of each aircraft, which contains tables, values, shapes and all manner of parameters for the FDE. You may have heard us, or other developers, talking about the limitations of a simulator's FM/FDE, usually in the context of being unable to improve upon certain regimes (e.g. ground physics) or needing to make a compromise in one area to facilitate more accurate performance in another. This is normally in reference to not having the granular control or even any control for certain aspects of the FDE, or even the FDE itself having calculation errors leading to incorrect flight performance even with verified correct data. No matter the simulator you use, no FDE is perfect, and all require a certain amount of wizardry to achieve the desired end result specific to a particular aircraft.
.....
The take away from all of this is we still have work to do in some areas, but overall we've been trending closer and closer to the real world figures, and even including a few outliers our average difference from ground truth across the entire audit shown above is just 3.72%. The accepted margins on the ‘big’ simulators used for training pilots is around 3%. Where possible we hold ourselves to an even higher standard, and will continue to chip away at these gaps between us and reality.
 

[Farlis]

1 hour ago, Claudius_ said:

And you are basing your feeling on the real Airbus Pilots exclusively? I don't do that because the real pilots are often in conflict of interest, and I like to judge the software from my experience as a simmer. The Fenix A320 is a good software after all,  it's updated regularly, but the flight model on the first versions, before the "externalization" was better than now.

So in other words: You have an opinion but no idea. Classic simmer behaviour.

Edited November 16, 2024 by Farlis

[Claudius_]

9 minutes ago, Farlis said:

So in other words: You have an opinion but no idea. Classic simmer behaviour.

Yes, I'm a proud, classic and radical simmer.

[longhaul747]

One thing I am a bit confused on is the upcoming A319 with sharklet's or is it coming? 

I could have sworn it was mentioned that the A319 with Sharklet's was going to be coming but will take longer because of less available data.  However when I looked for this statement all I am seeing is we did not get the A319 with Sharklet's because of lack of data.  A recent YouTube video reviewing the Sharklet's said we got them all except for the A319 and not to worry since hardly any A319's were made with Sharklet's.  All the while coincidentally I was reading a news story about American Airlines and it showed a picture of an A319 with Sharklet's.  It may not be as common as the A320 and A321 but A319's with Sharklet's are definitely out there.   

I guess I just need reassurance that the Fenix A319 with Sharklet's will be coming eventually?  

[Simselli]

29 minutes ago, longhaul747 said:

One thing I am a bit confused on is the upcoming A319 with sharklet's or is it coming? 

I could have sworn it was mentioned that the A319 with Sharklet's was going to be coming but will take longer because of less available data.  However when I looked for this statement all I am seeing is we did not get the A319 with Sharklet's because of lack of data.  A recent YouTube video reviewing the Sharklet's said we got them all except for the A319 and not to worry since hardly any A319's were made with Sharklet's.  All the while coincidentally I was reading a news story about American Airlines and it showed a picture of an A319 with Sharklet's.  It may not be as common as the A320 and A321 but A319's with Sharklet's are definitely out there.   

I guess I just need reassurance that the Fenix A319 with Sharklet's will be coming eventually?  

I dunno, but if the data's not available,  Fenix may not do them simply because they are not in the business of just sticking bits on aircraft without the required data, as it will certainly effect the current version.

[rick celik]

Avsim never fails to amuse me. Someone is arguing that their simming experience on how an a320 feels, has more weight than an actual a320 pilots experience. 

That’s the crowd that sometimes makes addons or the base sim less realistic because that’s how they think it should feel or look as opposed to how it actually is. 

Now i understand the flight model isn’t perfect, but id take real life pilots feedback over a person who’s never flown an aircraft anyday…. Its only logical 

[longhaul747]

1 hour ago, Simselli said:

I dunno, but if the data's not available,  Fenix may not do them simply because they are not in the business of just sticking bits on aircraft without the required data, as it will certainly effect the current version.

That is what I am afraid of.  Because of the lack of data we may never actually see the A319 with Sharklet's.  I am almost certain they said they were working on it and that it will come at a later date.  I just can't seem to find it now. 

[Aamir]

5 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

Since last patches I'm not satisfied regardind the flight model, the number are there but the feeling is wrong from my point of view: something needs to be adjusted on the inertia when rolling and pitching, and it flares like a glider at landing if you approach with a wrong angle. Take offs appear to be ok, but it's a liner and the flight model isn't so important.

Well, you're essentially describing a fly by wire aircraft. Inherently when the stick is returned to center it should not roll further at all - if it does so, it loses precision and is generally considered a relatively failed design. In a crosswind, etc, you absolutely do not want the airplane trying to smooth your inputs, not when you're trying to decrab and align, etc, just for "feel of inertial" - The difference here is that the Airbus stick is a heavily damped unit in reality. Your return to center from your desktop joystick to a real Airbus sidestick is probably "lighter" by a factor of 10, if not more. However, we cannot slow down your return to center artificially, nor rate limit it - as we cannot decipher whether it is a return to center, or left through right. The rate limits of the roll channel at 15 degrees/s are respected regardless of course, but you can get to it, and out of it, very quickly with a lighter joystick - so what is the solution?

Well, a good calibration would go a long way to begin with - going to the sensitivity menu and starting to adjust things like reactivity to your liking - and similarly with the actual input curves, we have basic recommendations as a starting point on our knowledge base - but they are simply a starting point - you need to adjust to your liking and add and remove weight as you see fit by modulating the curve. It will also add "inertia" in the sense your return to center will take longer, so there is an emulation of damping if you're able to mix reactivity and sensitivty curves. It would be specific to your hardware and your own taste - something we unfortunately accomodate (the hardware that is - there are 10s of thousands of combinations here..) - all we can do on our side is to make absolutely sure the fly by wire does what it is expected to do per it's design - as any filtering we add with naturally turn things out of sync on other joysticks. Things like SDS etc are present in options to also help with this. 

Re flare - yes, that is exactly again the system working as intended and as designed. Your flare "weighting" is dynamic, the nose down input is "dynamic", and based on the actual mathematics that utilise your pitch angle through 50ft as a significant input - more pitch means, in laymans terms, you're gonna feel like you need to apply more backstick, and with less pitch, you feel like you need to apply less. As it would be in a conventional aircraft in a sense, but here we and Airbus are adding the impetus. If you are destabilised in this area you're going to have an issue unless you're familiar enough with the aircraft that you are in sync with it's attitude coming in and how much backstick to expect to need based on where you were at, at 50ft. Generally, it works out in reality because the pitch attitude at 50ft is not going to be far from the expected design norms where in sim.. well, as you approach at the wrong angle, it's gonna bite if you're not used to it. 

  

4 minutes ago, longhaul747 said:

That is what I am afraid of.  Because of the lack of data we may never actually see the A319 with Sharklet's.  I am almost certain they said they were working on it and that it will come at a later date.  I just can't seem to find it now. 

https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-05_its_shark_week/

And yes, we continue to work on it. It has been promised, it will be delivered.

Edited November 16, 2024 by Aamir