22 minutes ago, Aamir said:

I can look at adding a slightly unrealistic "AP lock" for when the windshifts cause the AP to kick out. I, and we, ultimately can't really do much about MSFS unsmoothed weather updates knocking out AP besides add this option for people. Probably worth adding as we do get quite a few customers, such as Bob above, stating it's a problem with Fenix as opposed to just the aircraft following it's Airbus design specs on when to kick out the AP and what for. The disconnect logic on our side is, and has been, relatively unchanged for several months now.

The only time I see this issue of AP disconnect, is if I take off on a runway say rwy 18 and then the course to the next fix in departure is 360, in other  words a sharp turn. The work around I have used is to use heading to gradually turn the aircraft towards the new heading, it just doesn't seem to be able to deal with sharp turns under auto pilot. I never had AP kick off with turbulence, 

Edited January 18, 20251 yr by Bobsk8

You gotta love Fenix insane level of details! They really raised the bar high 

I have had a FENIX for 1 year now. but having the experience of fslabs in p3d, I decided to try it for 2020 and was right, this is the best model of flight, systems, failures, the feeling of being in an airplane that is currently on the marketplace. I also decided to try the FSU sounds for this plane from this video. 

Well, what can I tell you - I found my zen in the simulator. This is exactly the immersive flight experience I was looking for in a simulator. must have!!

Edited January 18, 20251 yr by Ondjin

29 minutes ago, Ondjin said:

, this is the best model of flight, systems, failures, the feeling of being in an airplane that is currently on the marketplace.

based on what "is the best model"?

2 hours ago, Aamir said:

I can look at adding a slightly unrealistic "AP lock" for when the windshifts cause the AP to kick out. I, and we, ultimately can't really do much about MSFS unsmoothed weather updates knocking out AP besides add this option for people. Probably worth adding as we do get quite a few customers, such as Bob above, stating it's a problem with Fenix as opposed to just the aircraft following it's Airbus design specs on when to kick out the AP and what for. The disconnect logic on our side is, and has been, relatively unchanged for several months now.

I'm not sure it's a windshift knocking the AP out, at least in my case(s). If the AP went out, it should still stay more or less on the current pitch and bank angle, maybe with a slight deviation due to the wind. What happened in my case(s) is that the aircraft literally shot up in the sky (8000+ FPM), which consequently lead to a stall and then it went diving down. And most importantly: It happened once *without* the AP, in manual flight (the other time it was with AP on).
In any case I don't think a windshift would cause the aircraft to pitch 30 degrees up...

12 hours ago, micstatic said:

I love fenix don't get me wrong.  But strangely I just had this happen the other day.  Was at cruise.  All good.  Went upstairs, came back 5 min later to the cockpit alarms.  Recovered it before a big problem.  But still.  I hadn't even considered it was the plane.  Thought it was just a crazy wind shift/spike.  But maybe it was the plane?

Now that you guys are mentioning it... I also thought it was so wind-issue, from the days back. Found also my Fenix alarming after I went away for a while. Recovery was simple, no issue...

And also yesterday, I couldn't activate AP1. AP2 was working. No other faults visible.

Some weird bugs if you ask me.

But... it is in experimental phase so...

Also had a TOGA LK and unexplained climb the other day. Actually experienced a few AP disconnects and alarms - all in the last few weeks. Done about 300 flights in Fenix to date and never had that issue until recently.

For whatever it's worth - I spent the Sunday morning going through our ticketing system since a couple of you have come up with this issue here. 

I found pretty much every single one of these interactions (there were quite a few!) were marked resolved as a result of 2 things:

1) Windshifts, we discussed above.

2) This is important - MSFS will happily set bindings for things and reset them here and there on updates etc. It is extremely important to check that you do NOT have a double binding anywhere - the most common example is on the numpad which a lot of people configure to use with their views. MSFS can, for example, set one of those buttons as "aileron trim left" or "elevator trim up", both of which will kick out the AP no matter what we do. The last changes we made several months ago was to set the "disconnect" threshold arbitrarily high, for people bumping their sticks etc. I believe we set it at 60% or such, of stick travel, before the AP disconnects. The issue with this MSFS binding is the moment you hit it, even for 0.1s - you will have FULL 100% input for the period of time the key is depressed. This will instantly shoot past the 60% threshold and kick your AP right off. In reality there is a locking solenoid on the stick, the force of which you need to overcome before AP kicks off, hence our solution. Don't just look at your stick controls either. Rudder can do it too. This is the most common basic cause of it, if not windshifts. 

I have so far not come across any unresolved instances of this besides those two issues - happy to investigate further but please make sure you are not falling afoul of these sorts of MSFS hijinks. As I said before too, happy to continue looking into a more robust but less realistic optional system, but there are some knock on considerations with the various ECAM inputs and outputs when automatic AP disconnect is inhibited, and the aircraft is expecting it to drop. 

Hope this helps, gotta run for the rest of my Sunday - but I will continue looking when back into the office Monday. Thanks!

Thanks aamir. Love the plane you guys made. Also your engagement with the community is top tier. As evidenced in this topic. 

Agree totally with the above, explains the issue and resolution soundly, and without any BS. 

Edited January 19, 20251 yr by Simselli

Very content with my Fenix stuff but for sure will get the FSL A321NEO on day 1. 

On 1/19/2025 at 7:43 AM, Aamir said:

For whatever it's worth - I spent the Sunday morning going through our ticketing system since a couple of you have come up with this issue here. 

I found pretty much every single one of these interactions (there were quite a few!) were marked resolved as a result of 2 things:

1) Windshifts, we discussed above.

2) This is important - MSFS will happily set bindings for things and reset them here and there on updates etc. It is extremely important to check that you do NOT have a double binding anywhere - the most common example is on the numpad which a lot of people configure to use with their views. MSFS can, for example, set one of those buttons as "aileron trim left" or "elevator trim up", both of which will kick out the AP no matter what we do. The last changes we made several months ago was to set the "disconnect" threshold arbitrarily high, for people bumping their sticks etc. I believe we set it at 60% or such, of stick travel, before the AP disconnects. The issue with this MSFS binding is the moment you hit it, even for 0.1s - you will have FULL 100% input for the period of time the key is depressed. This will instantly shoot past the 60% threshold and kick your AP right off. In reality there is a locking solenoid on the stick, the force of which you need to overcome before AP kicks off, hence our solution. Don't just look at your stick controls either. Rudder can do it too. This is the most common basic cause of it, if not windshifts. 

I have so far not come across any unresolved instances of this besides those two issues - happy to investigate further but please make sure you are not falling afoul of these sorts of MSFS hijinks. As I said before too, happy to continue looking into a more robust but less realistic optional system, but there are some knock on considerations with the various ECAM inputs and outputs when automatic AP disconnect is inhibited, and the aircraft is expecting it to drop. 

Hope this helps, gotta run for the rest of my Sunday - but I will continue looking when back into the office Monday. Thanks!

I just posted on your Discord under the MS2020 community forum the circumstances around it just happening to me.

On 1/17/2025 at 4:37 PM, RJPIC said:

For me I prefer FSL because of (IMO) a better flight model, weather radar, MELs. They still have a lot of work to do but I believe it will get better. Dont get me wrong Fenix is also a great product, visuals are superior, better performance (again IMO), fs2crew integration and the whole range of A32x aircraft with well simulated systems and failures model.

For me as an airline pilot, FSL makes me feel at work, yesterday after loading my aircraft, I found a plane with a few MELs, no APU and the lovely yellow stickers on the overhead panel. 

I will continue supporting both products, I think some competition is good for us in the end 

 

Totally agree. I own both, but I prefer the FSL A321. The acars implementation is wonderful as is the flight model. 

One aspect I still really like, and is I would say unique, in  the Fenix ground physics, is the way it makes the takeoff / rollout runs without wandering wildly left / right with sometimes just a bit of variable wind... 

I have watched a few videos of the FSLabs 321 and I noticed it inherited this sensitivity of ground steering from P3D / FSX, the biggest drawback I recall from using FSLabs in those platforms, probably aggravated by the still rather poor ground physics in FS 2024, which are a bit better maybe than in FS 2020 but still need a lot of attention from ASOBO...

The FENIX has implemented that "rudder ratio" filtering to rudder inputs, and works much better than all other aircraft I ever tried in either 2020 or 2024.

I don't yet own the FSLabs 321, but from the vids I didn't notice any significative impact in FPS. The FENIX is very fluid too, never had any impact since I started using it either.

For me it's more or less easy to decide. FENIX 320 CEO + FSLABS 321 CEO... Waiting for a NEO, and it could perfectly be the FBW ported to FS 2024.

Edited January 21, 20251 yr by jcomm

On 1/18/2025 at 8:40 PM, micstatic said:

Was at cruise.  All good.  Went upstairs, came back 5 min later to the cockpit alarms.

Instant karma. 😎