V1 Simulations says he doesn't feel like it's a problem.  He has said many times the VNAV is terrible in real life.  You have to plan ahead and be proficient at handling the plane.  He has commented on this video.  Yes, the Fenix is probably a bit deficient in calculating the path effectively, and Fenix is reworking the VNAV.  However, abnormal conditions occur in all situations (vectors, steep descents via ATC, weather/wind).  The same applies to the Boeing 737.  I know pilots who have had to extend flaps on the STAR and even lower the gear beyond the IAF.  Sim pilots tend to assume these aircraft are all perfect at predicting wind, ATC/FMC flight plan changes, or other factors that affect performance.

4 hours ago, Orlaam said:

V1 Simulations says he doesn't feel like it's a problem.  

This guy is the same one who said the initial release was "great" or "spot on" or something along these lines. Three years later and the team is focused mostly (to their credit, as I mentioned before) on correcting the "Great" dynamics it was initially released with.

I suggest you take the stuff you hear on youtube with a pinch of salt, even when it comes from professionals because on youtube they are in a capacity of "streamers" or entertainers of sorts and what they tell you comes from quite a different position. We all have different subjective opinions and most certainly different levels of scrutiny.

It's best to do your own research and make your own judgement, the net is full of information and readily available data. Do not rely entirely on youtube "influencers" and those who made it their life's vocation to regurgitate their stuff like it was the gospel.

31 minutes ago, ha5mvo said:

This guy is the same one who said the initial release was "great" or "spot on" or something along these lines. Three years later and the team is focused mostly (to their credit, as I mentioned before) on correcting the "Great" dynamics it was initially released with.

I suggest you take the stuff you hear on youtube with a pinch of salt, even when it comes from professionals because on youtube they are in a capacity of "streamers" or entertainers of sorts and what they tell you comes from quite a different position. We all have different subjective opinions and most certainly different levels of scrutiny.

It's best to do your own research and make your own judgement, the net is full of information and readily available data. Do not rely entirely on youtube "influencers" and those who made it their life's vocation to regurgitate their stuff like it was the gospel.

I think this is spot on. I agree completely.

The good thing is, Fenix seems committed to do the best they can. They went far and beyond with their efforts to improve, compared to other devs, who call it a day (with inferior products). From what I see, they are also very open for constructive criticism. They want the numbers to back up bug reports, but that's understandable.

They already have the best Airbus in the MS sim ecosystem, yet they still improve. I love that!

I've never found VNAV to be that far off personally. I do end up having to fly most descents with the speedbrake extended for at least part of it, but being a passenger on A320s many times and generally observing what's going on on the wing this seems to be normal IRL too.

A/Ps are never perfect. I had a good lesson on this IRL the other day when flying a PA28 with a newly fitted Garmin GFC500 Autopilot. Although obviously not directly comparable, being a light aircraft, it's still a relatively sophisticated system with both roll and pitch, altitude hold etc. We were flying along with the autopilot holding a heading and an altitude. It was a warm day with lots of thermals, and the autopilot was working hard to maintain the desired altitude, pitching up and down and the speed was increasing and decreasing. I ended up getting stuck "behind the aircraft" as I was then throttling up and down to keep the speed under control, which was then causing the autopilot to compensate by pitching and re-trimming, so we ended up getting stuck in this constant parabolic state of pitching up and down as we were fighting each other. In the end I had to turn it off and fly it manually as I was happy to compensate 50-100 feet here and there for the constant pitching up and down to hold it in the thermals.

The message here really is it doesn't matter how sophisticated the autopilot is, it's very easy to get behind the aeroplane and end up in a situation where you're not fully in control of what it's doing. Ultimately you still need to be in control of the plane, regardless of the level of automation available.

3 hours ago, ha5mvo said:

This guy is the same one who said the initial release was "great" or "spot on" or something along these lines. Three years later and the team is focused mostly (to their credit, as I mentioned before) on correcting the "Great" dynamics it was initially released with.

I suggest you take the stuff you hear on youtube with a pinch of salt, even when it comes from professionals because on youtube they are in a capacity of "streamers" or entertainers of sorts and what they tell you comes from quite a different position. We all have different subjective opinions and most certainly different levels of scrutiny.

It's best to do your own research and make your own judgement, the net is full of information and readily available data. Do not rely entirely on youtube "influencers" and those who made it their life's vocation to regurgitate their stuff like it was the gospel.

Take this video with a pinch of salt. V1 found things wrong with inital release in his comparisons videos but not drastic enough.

What V1 wrote "So many things wrong with this video. First off why are all the mach numbers way off? This is an environmental problem but conveniently that is all hidden from the cropped screens. The environmental plays a big part, temperature, wind, deviation from ISA etc. secondly, the Fenix is on a different software standard than the 2 on the right. 3rd I’m pretty sure that video is from a sim not a real world cockpit but even if it is, it’s still a different version than what the Fenix is reading. It’s possibly even a NEO. There are no indications to verify what configuration the aircraft’s are in terms of engines. Also why is there a weird splice when the descent starts? You should show an identical “push to manage” at 5 prior to TOD across all 3. Idk Fenix isn’t perfect but this screams “low time pilot thinks he knows everything looking for clout” 

Comment was replied back to "We are type rated to fly the A32F, all the family, for sure we will have slightly differences, but 3000ft high and 300kts on final diference? What else you guys want?"

Response back from V1.  "@fsprimo there’s something called drag. The N1 fan on the neo is significantly more draggy than the ceo. The rate of descent achieved in a NEO alone, will result in that discrepancy. Don’t get me started on idle speeds either. Try again when Fenix releases a neo and do a direct comparison, with the exact environmentals (or as close as possible) and I bet you will be surprised" The video is flawed in so many places.

The fact the guy who created the video said you almost never use speedbrakes in the real airplane, is an outright lie. 

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by carlanthony24

Looks like the usual FSL diehard fan(s) are big mad again about the credit/reputation Fenix gets/has, and about IRL pilots who give it praise. IRL pilots and long-time simmers like V1 and others don't have any bias, and have enough expertise to call it like it is, including both good and bad. V1 certainly has pointed out the negatives on the Fenix too especially before the Block2 update. He felt (like many of us) even with the negatives in the early days, it was still a stellar overall aircraft, and in its current form even more so.

320 Sim Pilot, Into the Blue Simulations, KatiePilot, Blackbox711, etc are all in the same category as V1-Simulations and I'd take their word/opinions any day over certain others around here with agendas to push. And as common sense would dictate, good to take stock of *all* their opinions/reviews along with one's own experience, and try not to get triggered if their opinions don't match yours, or places your precious in a lesser light.
 

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by lwt1971

Just need some clarification, a few have said that the vnav is being reworked. I thought the BFU was supposed to feature the reworked VNAV, correct? There's another one in the works? I do some obvious signs of improvement to the vnav since the BFU. The only main issue I generally notice after a few flights is they still have that bug (at least I think it to be) when it comes to entering in a custom descent speed in the perf page and how it chases IAS from the start instead of transitioning to that properly.

As for the use of speed brakes, I'm not a RW pilot so I can't gauge whether I'm pulling the boards too often or not. *shrug* I just do pilot things.

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by Kevin_28

I'd be interested to see/learn how the FBW A320neo compares here which leads me to ask the following question: are the 3 planes in the video all A320ceo with sharklets?

20 hours ago, roi1862 said:

If i am not mistaken this will be the 3rd rewrite of VNAV. I really hope that this time it will be good. 

Unfortunately we have never rewritten VNAV, we have rebuilt various sub-functions, algos, bits of math, bits of performance data, all sorts - but structurally and fundamentally it's been the inherited code from ProSim dictating the degree of flexibility we had. Yes, we have put quite some work into it as is - but the thing with keeping the wheels on the bicycle is that we can't address all things at once, so sometimes we must choose to do smaller work to make a smaller iterative improvement (like we have the last 3 years on VNAV) to keep things ticking along, maintained and improved, but not fully overhauled - until we have the resources or time necessary to do the overhaul. When we do start overhauling though, not only can we design from the ground up - but we can carry the learnings and "do not dos" from the old code and extensively working with it.

Lots of overhaulin' going around and resources are limited ultimately, ECAM etc is also a very big job, very long in the making - we perpetually have more to do than time, but we're trying to balance as much as possible! We actually hired a full-time programmer to the team over a year ago specifically to work on an all-new VNAV that isn't rushed, or "good enough", instead building it to a specification that is closer to aerospace than home software. We could have probably done something in half the time that was a decent upgrade on the current VNAV, but that's not our M.O. Take the time, do it right. Which we have been, and will continue to do despite many calls for us to rush out whatever we have in development now.

Edited August 8, 2025Aug 8 by Aamir

2 hours ago, Aamir said:

Unfortunately we have never rewritten VNAV, we have rebuilt various sub-functions, algos, bits of math, bits of performance data, all sorts - but structurally and fundamentally it's been the inherited code from ProSim dictating the degree of flexibility we had. Yes, we have put quite some work into it as is - but the thing with keeping the wheels on the bicycle is that we can't address all things at once, so sometimes we must choose to do smaller work to make a smaller iterative improvement (like we have the last 3 years on VNAV) to keep things ticking along, maintained and improved, but not fully overhauled - until we have the resources or time necessary to do the overhaul. When we do start overhauling though, not only can we design from the ground up - but we can carry the learnings and "do not dos" from the old code and extensively working with it.

Lots of overhaulin' going around and resources are limited ultimately, ECAM etc is also a very big job, very long in the making - we perpetually have more to do than time, but we're trying to balance as much as possible! We actually hired a full-time programmer to the team over a year ago specifically to work on an all-new VNAV that isn't rushed, or "good enough", instead building it to a specification that is closer to aerospace than home software. We could have probably done something in half the time that was a decent upgrade on the current VNAV, but that's not our M.O. Take the time, do it right. Which we have been, and will continue to do despite many calls for us to rush out whatever we have in development now.

Thanks for the insight Aamir ! 

2 hours ago, Aamir said:

Unfortunately we have never rewritten VNAV, we have rebuilt various sub-functions, algos, bits of math, bits of performance data, all sorts - but structurally and fundamentally it's been the inherited code from ProSim dictating the degree of flexibility we had. Yes, we have put quite some work into it as is - but the thing with keeping the wheels on the bicycle is that we can't address all things at once, so sometimes we must choose to do smaller work to make a smaller iterative improvement (like we have the last 3 years on VNAV) to keep things ticking along, maintained and improved, but not fully overhauled - until we have the resources or time necessary to do the overhaul. When we do start overhauling though, not only can we design from the ground up - but we can carry the learnings and "do not dos" from the old code and extensively working with it.

Lots of overhaulin' going around and resources are limited ultimately, ECAM etc is also a very big job, very long in the making - we perpetually have more to do than time, but we're trying to balance as much as possible! We actually hired a full-time programmer to the team over a year ago specifically to work on an all-new VNAV that isn't rushed, or "good enough", instead building it to a specification that is closer to aerospace than home software. We could have probably done something in half the time that was a decent upgrade on the current VNAV, but that's not our M.O. Take the time, do it right. Which we have been, and will continue to do despite many calls for us to rush out whatever we have in development now.

At some point, I’m going to have to break down and get an Airbus. 

The reception of the BFU, and all the previous work, means that point is really close now 👍

13 hours ago, ha5mvo said:

This guy is the same one who said the initial release was "great" or "spot on" or something along these lines. Three years later and the team is focused mostly (to their credit, as I mentioned before) on correcting the "Great" dynamics it was initially released with.

I suggest you take the stuff you hear on youtube with a pinch of salt, even when it comes from professionals because on youtube they are in a capacity of "streamers" or entertainers of sorts and what they tell you comes from quite a different position. We all have different subjective opinions and most certainly different levels of scrutiny.

It's best to do your own research and make your own judgement, the net is full of information and readily available data. Do not rely entirely on youtube "influencers" and those who made it their life's vocation to regurgitate their stuff like it was the gospel.

You have just negated this video in the OP.  How do you know he isn't the one posted inaccurate information based on his "experience"?  Again, it boils down to my original point: Pilots are ultimately responsible for planning descents and not relying 100% on computed VNAV.  Even A320 Pilot has said as much.  People need to stop nitpicking and chiding Fenix as the top Airbus on the market.  It's like a vocal minority want to punish Fenix for being the top Airbus in MSFS.  Fenix have pushed out more significant updates and included more models than anyone else for no cost.  90% of the developers in this community would have charged for some of it and most certainly charged for the 2024 package. At least Fenix are continuing to improve their add-ons, while many others will just tell you you are wrong or ban you for suggesting the product was flawed.  

I've been in this hobby since 2002 and do my own research, as anyone should.  I don't think several products that others claim are the best are good.

On 8/8/2025 at 3:27 PM, UrgentSiesta said:

At some point, I’m going to have to break down and get an Airbus. 

The reception of the BFU, and all the previous work, means that point is really close now 👍

Definitely worth it! im not an airbus guy, in the sim world I'd much rather fly a boeing or classic stick and rudder jet, I think its just more fun in simland.  That being said, the fenix is my absolute favorite aircraft to fly, 1000% worth every penny.  There is just nothing like it.  The sounds, the systems, the engine model, the flight model, everything is just so connected and dynamic that even for a boeing guy I love flying it.   If fenix would do a 737 I'd be in heaven.   The biggest thing wrong with the fenix is that Its ruined my ability to enjoy anything else.

Edited August 11, 2025Aug 11 by Pilot53

36 minutes ago, Pilot53 said:

im not an airbus guy, in the sim world I'd much rather fly a boeing or classic stick and rudder jet, I think its just more fun in simland.

Well, then the Airbus should be just your cup of tea since, unlike the Boeings, it actually has a stick. 😉

Sorry, could not resist...