Hi all.  So not much news has been made about this, but there is yet another new group that is developing an airliner for MSFS and this time, it's the A350.  So they just released their first trailer of their work on Youtube:

 

Now I want to be a bit cautious on this news. At the end of the day, when they release this A350, the product will speak for itself.  A lot of people were cynical about Fenix before they released their A320, and in hindsight, they were wrong.  Many people in the flight sim community consider the Fenix A320 to be the best airliner ever made for a flight sim, especially with all the latest updates.  Having said that, this team seems much smaller than the Vector team, and they are still looking for someone to help them with sounds.  Also, in the Youtube chat during the video, various people pointed out the nose looks a little off, so this is something they will need to improve on.

According to their Reddit post, they have been working on this A350 for 3 years now.  I will just link their initial Reddit post when they made the announcement so you can judge for yourself:

There was also a post in Reddit in the last week, by a random user (so someone not on their dev team), who pasted information from RhodiumCode's Discord server, to Reddit, that gave more information about the project:

RhodiumCode will be competing directly against iniBuild's A350.  The fidelity would have to be much better than the iniBuilds A350 for RhodiumCode to sell enough copies.

My own impression after reading their Reddit posts and watching the video is that their team doesn't seem to be as solid as the Vector 787 team.  Vector seems to have a much larger team, and the PR person for Vector, Ellie, worked at Orbx and iniBuilds before, so they managed to poach her onto their team. Plus Vector was able to earn the trust of FSElite, who wrote an article for them and presented them at the recent FSWeekend, so that tells me that FSElite considered Vector to be a serious company. That's not to say RhodiumCode isn't a serious company - but they don't have an established person like Ellie on their team, and they don't have a reputable person or reputable organization like FSElite going to bat for them, so it's much harder to tell, versus Vector (but despite having all this, the Vector 787 could also turn out to be disappointing, we won't know until it's finally released).

However, at the end of the day, let the product speak for itself.  When RhodiumCode releases their A350 we will know how good it is (this assuming that they can release it and it doesn't end up as abandonware).  

Edited May 3May 3 by abrams_tank

already discussed:

 

35 minutes ago, RTK1972 said:

already discussed:

 

I didn't see that thread.  In any case, the video was just posted today, so the video trailer is new news.  This video trailer is the first tangible evidence of their work.

Maybe one of the mods can change the thread title to "RhodiumCode posts first trailer of their A350 today" to separate this thread from the other one.

Edited May 3May 3 by abrams_tank

What does their A350 offer that the inibuild's version doesn't?

The only reason I would potentially consider switching from IniBuilds is a jump-ahead feature. If RhodiumCode A350 doesnt offer this, I honestly see no reason why I should replace my A350 with another one...

It looks terrible. The exterior design is completely wrong, and the cockpit is a total mess. It's as if they just experimented with the wrong proportions and fonts.

In this regard, no one can beat the ini A350; the exterior model and cockpit are among the most beautiful in the simulator. However, there are issues under the hood, particularly with stability (WASM, etc.), which is why I'm more excited about Rhodiumcode's system-level capabilities.

3 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

What does their A350 offer that the inibuild's version doesn't?

It would have to offer much more than iniBuilds for people to buy it.  They are going to have to do a much higher fidelity level A350, something like a "study level" A350, for people to buy it.  I guess it would need to be something like PMDG or FSLabs level?

54 minutes ago, marlon445 said:

It looks terrible. The exterior design is completely wrong, and the cockpit is a total mess. It's as if they just experimented with the wrong proportions and fonts.

In this regard, no one can beat the ini A350; the exterior model and cockpit are among the most beautiful in the simulator. However, there are issues under the hood, particularly with stability (WASM, etc.), which is why I'm more excited about Rhodiumcode's system-level capabilities.

You can probably go on their Discord channel and give them feedback on how they can improve on the exterior model? Some people in the Youtube channel commented the nose looked a bit off, so I hope they took the feedback to figure out how to improve the model.

Have to say it looks ropey unfortunately.

We have been so spoiled by Fenix/Pmdg/Inibuilds

 

H.

I love the INI A350. I'm flying it right now in fact. But it's certainly not without it's issues. If Rhodiumcode can come up with an A350 that performs better and has deeper system depth etc, I'd definitely be willing to overlook the visual side of things and give it a shot. 

Oh thank goodness for another Airbus....we almost ran out!

38 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Oh thank goodness for another Airbus....we almost ran out!

I remember back in the day that an Airbus was like finding the holy grail!

4 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

Oh thank goodness for another Airbus....we almost ran out!

So Rhodiumcode started this project 3 years ago. Inibuilds made rhe A350 announcement for MSFS in December of 2023. So Rhodiumcode probably started work on the A350 before any credible developer had announced they were working on it.

The Boeing 737, 747, and 777 had always been covered by PMDG any all the developers know that it's hard to beat PMDG in a race - plus, knowing PMDG will come out with these planes eventually, some customers may hold off their purchase of another competing product, until PMDG released these Boeing models.

This left the 757, 767, and 787. Back in 2023, it wasn't for certain that Qualitywings had given up their work on the 787. And Bluebird Simulations had announced they would do the 757, 767, and 787.

So when Rhodiumcode decided what airliner to do 3 years ago, the A350 made a lot of sense, as no known credible for profit developer was known to be developing it.

Edited May 4May 4 by abrams_tank

16 hours ago, marlon445 said:

It looks terrible. The exterior design is completely wrong, and the cockpit is a total mess. It's as if they just experimented with the wrong proportions and fonts.

In this regard, no one can beat the ini A350; the exterior model and cockpit are among the most beautiful in the simulator. However, there are issues under the hood, particularly with stability (WASM, etc.), which is why I'm more excited about Rhodiumcode's system-level capabilities.

The exterior model and cockpit are modeled wrong, Windows too big in the cockpit, overhead too high, Winglets incorrect, Wings were taken from the -1000 and put on the -900 etc. Its like 80% of the way there and Ini has said thats good enough for them. Do the textures and other things look nice? Yes they do but the model is not correct.

20 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

What does their A350 offer that the inibuild's version doesn't?

Hopefully a realistic flightmodel