2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

.....and high resolution textures 

Many people mention, how smooth the performance with the Aero A340 is. Even on big airports (main destinations for the 600).
I guess the performance was one main reason, they don't use high res textures here and there. The Inibuilds cockpit does look much better. So I wonder why many streamers don't seem to see it. But the Inibuilds is also more frame hungry.

System wise: the Toliss is another world 👍, compared to the Inibuilds. And I never flew such a 'finished' product on release. Some tiny things here and there, but nothing to moan about. I never saw an Inibuilds plane released, without major glitches. But other devs, like PMDG, also have some homework to do.

I would suggest some QoL improvements for the EFB though. Like a default spawn setting for the whole EFB. Some things it doesn't remember for the next start. Best way would be to be able to define a saved situation ( > the config of it) as the default spawn config (plane and EFB). 

39 minutes ago, Watsi said:

And I never flew such a 'finished' product on release. Some tiny things here and there, but nothing to moan about.

I remember either Rafi or Thorsten saying back in December after the decision to delay was made, that they planned to basically release it in a state as if it already had its first round of service packs.

I would say after the huge blow to the Aerosoft's reputation as an aircraft developer the A330 was, they also had little other choice if they really wanted to get into the good books of their customers again.

Edited March 14Mar 14 by Farlis

My first impressions:

- Sounds are nice, the external model is nice, it feels good to taxi and fly

- EFB could use some additional QOL features that are pretty standard elsewhere, like being able to auto-populate weather and aircraft weight information in the take-off / landing performance calculation pages and the weight loading pages.  It generally looks dated as well.

- I couldn't find an IRS option for instant alignment

- Internal textures are ok but not great or at the standard I would expect for this price point.

- Minor thing, but the default Simbrief profiles are in LBS, when really any operator of this aircraft would use KG.  Easily fixed through some custom Simbrief profiles but a strange choice. 

Unfortunately I could not complete my first flight.  Once I entered cruise, I set it to 4x acceleration and used the setting to autopause at TOD or if there were any master caution indications.  I came back to find the aircraft paused about 20 minutes into cruise because I had two malfunctions.  I had left the scaling for malfunctions at 100%, which I expected would be a real life likelihood of having something malfunction, so getting two after a grand total of ~30 minutes of flight seems bizarre.  I'll just turn malfunctions off for now.  But the biggest issue was that I could not unpause the aircraft.  The sim wasn't frozen, I could exit to the menu, but no combination of my pause keys, my simpause keys, disabling autopause in the EFB would get the aircraft moving again.  I went into devmode to see if I could unpause it from there, but devmode did not show the sim as being paused, so I'm really not sure what was going on there.

I'll give it another go, this time not using any autopause functions, but this was an annoying start for what otherwise seems to be a well done aircraft on balance.  Other than my pause issue, I had the thought that if they did an A330 at this level I'd certainly buy it.

I'll add that if anyone sees any of my issues above as being user error, I'm happy to be corrected / educated.

Edited March 14Mar 14 by regis9

16 minutes ago, regis9 said:

like being able to auto-populate weather and aircraft weight information in the take-off / landing performance calculation pages and the weight loading pages

It's a bit unintuitive but the "Reset" button will just do that.

I have to grin to myself when I read these lists or watch streamers fumble about, and people betraying that they haven't read the manual. Seems these days no one does that anymore and everything should be self-explanatory. And when it isn't people assume it doesn't work. 😉

16 minutes ago, regis9 said:

I had left the scaling for malfunctions at 100%,

Case in point about not reading the manual. The 100 is not 100% it is 100x. So leaving it at the default 100 the likelyhood of a failure occuring is hundred times higher than during the normal life cycle of real world aircraft. If you want the same rate as real life you need to set it to 1 !

Edited March 14Mar 14 by Farlis

17 minutes ago, regis9 said:

- EFB could use some additional QOL features that are pretty standard elsewhere, like being able to auto-populate weather and aircraft weight information in the take-off / landing performance calculation pages and the weight loading pages.

The weights on the weight-and-balance screen will populate too, but only if you load the flight plan from the the ATSU. A bit unintuitive maybe, but again, explained in the manual.

Fair enough on reading the manual, in my defense I'll say these thing don't normally require reading a manual and are usually quite intuitive (frankly even in the iFly's non-user friendly EFB), but I'll take this advice forward on my second flight.  

21 hours ago, Vel said:

Seems a bit harsh. What exactly in the model do you find "pathetic"?

It'd be one thing if it was just lower res textures, but it's just sloppy. Floating geometry, intersecting models and animations, poor texture work - it's just bad. 

Biggest examples are that the slats, flaps, and gear doors are just floating in space with the linkages either not properly connected or not modelled at all. See:

Again, it's not that it's lower detail or lower res that's the problem, it's that it's inaccurate in really obvious ways and attention to detail in basic things like animations is totally lacking. People make fun of PMDGs models but they are a significant step above this in both accuracy and texture work, let alone compared to Fenix/Inibuilds/TFDI.

Edited March 14Mar 14 by Stavros

2 minutes ago, Stavros said:

It'd be one thing if it was just lower res textures, but it's just sloppy. Floating geometry, intersecting models and animations, poor texture work - it's just bad. 

Yup. That's exactly what I expected from the old guys at Aerosoft. Unfortunately.

Just now, MrLamb said:

Yup. That's exactly what I expected from the old guys at Aerosoft. Unfortunately.

Somehow they get worse with every release. I dare say even the Aerosoft Airbus X all the way back in FSX had a better model than this. 

42 minutes ago, regis9 said:

Fair enough on reading the manual, in my defense I'll say these thing don't normally require reading a manual and are usually quite intuitive (frankly even in the iFly's non-user friendly EFB), but I'll take this advice forward on my second flight.  

I'm just competing a 4 hour flight and it performed flawlessly. You have to read the manual to get things right for TO. I found a few errors in the manual, but if you know the Airbus flow you can figure out the Gess. Read the manual.

The Thai repaint has grammar errors and a huge noticeable line dividing sections above the wings on the main fuse (this is the best i can explain). The Virgin Atlantic repaint looks dull, plain, very low-res, reminds me of FSX.

I honestly hope someone picks this up and adds the missing bump maps, reflection layers etc. This is not MSFS2024 level at all. Same with the cockpit, i hope someone does a remake (or Aerosoft - They definitely should).

As for the systems, love it. Joy to fly, VERY heavy and feels like the 75 meter beast it is. Nice work Toliss.

I was hoping That Aerosoft would update their bad A330 release of the CEO. Now with the collaboration with ToLiss, maybe they can rebuild the A330 the right way. Hopefully.

Reading and seeing all the issues with the visual model I'm quite confused. As abysmally bad as the A330 was, at least on the visual side it was very good.

Wasn't the entire point of this collaboration to have the internal Aerosoft team do the stuff they are really good at? And now they are cutting corners even in a field where they are proficient?

18 minutes ago, Farlis said:

Wasn't the entire point of this collaboration to have the internal Aerosoft team do the stuff they are really good at?

Yup. They were good in the prehistoric past.

 

18 minutes ago, Farlis said:

And now they are cutting corners even in a field where they are proficient?

I'm sure it was a aerosoft management decision not to put 'too much' money into gfx development / design. 

You do things like that when you don't care about the customers or the company because you're ancient and have long since secured your financial future.

You just take what you can get – especially when you realize that the competition is MUCH further ahead...

I almost get the impression that Aerosoft needed (or rather, misused?) the good name 'Toliss' to make some more money. That would be very sad, wouldn't it?

Edited March 14Mar 14 by MrLamb

27 minutes ago, MrLamb said:

You do things like that when you don't care about the customers or the company because you're ancient and have long since secured your financial future.

As far as I know the current CEO of Aerosoft is new. The old guys left a little before Mathijs threw in the towel.