Has anyone here considered building a flyable Airbus plane for FU3 ? I would love to be able to take an A330-200 into the skies above San Francisco and Seattle.Consider this a begging note :-)Chris Low,ENGLAND.

Chris, the Airbus series are all "fly by wire" and wouldn't be our kind of aircraft. I lost interest as soon as I learned that the pilots push buttons and let the flight computer do the job. Actually, there have been a couple of fatal Airbus accidents involving the pilots trying to override or fight the flight computer. Maybe Motormouse can tell us more about this? Hans Petter

Hi Chris,The real trick with any of the modern fly-by-wire Airbus aircraft would be in modelling a decent CWS mode. CWS (Control Wheel Steering) is a form of semi-autopilot where the pilot commands the aircraft to pitch/roll to a certain angle using the controls as normal, then releases them once he's reached the desired angle. The autopilot then maintains that aircraft attitude until the controls are moved again. CWS cannot perform altitude/heading holds on its own but can be used as an intercept mode to capture a desired alt/heading instead of using the full autopilot in "capture" mode.While most other aircraft have a fully manual mode where the pilot's inputs are directly linked to the movement of the control surfaces as well as CWS and full Command mode, the Airbus designers took direct control away from the pilots by implementing CWS as the most basic form of control. This version of the autopilot is hard enough to get right in a real simulator (I've been involved with two, one of which is still a bit buggy). Frankly I'd hate to even attempt it in FU3.That said I think an A330/A340 would make an impressive model. You could either disregard how you're actually supposed to fly it and make it fully manual or make a decent AI model out of it.Hope this explains a few things.Rich.

Rich,Disregard how I'm supposed to fly it ? Do I ever do anything else ? :-lolSeriously though, I would always be flying any plane manually in FU3. I can't be doing with all that autopilot rubbish. It's about time that airliners were flown by real men again :-lolThe Airbus A330-200 is one of the most beautiful airliners on the planet, and even a high detail AI version would be better than nothing. Having said that, it would be ludicrous to create such a detailed model without developing it further into a fully flyable plane.Chris Low,ENGLAND.

Chris,"Having said that, it would be ludicrous to create such a detailed model without developing it further into a fully flyable plane."My sympathies exactly. Unfortunately, AI aircraft are basically just 'shells' and contain little resources for actually flying. An aircraft resfile may contain over 300 resources, yet only two or three are the 3D model, and less than 30 are textures. Now you may see that, behind the bad jokes and wayward delivery schedules, there is a lot of work behind making a plane and doing an AI is the easiest part!I have learned this the hard way. I had thoughts of grabbing Ansgar's AI 737 and doing that. I got as far as flying the basic model but it was simply too much work to make it right.That said, I'd still like to see a '320 kicking around, even if it is only AI :-waveJon Point*************************([email protected])*************************

Jon,I didn't realise that there was such a vast difference between a highly detailed AI plane model, and a flyable version. However, I am well aware of just how much work is involved. It has taken me two months of hard work just using FLED, and I can imagine that creating a new flyable plane from scratch is far more difficult and time consuming.Chris Low,ENGLAND.PS. Of course, having mentioned my desire to see an Airbus plane flying around the FU3 skies, Ansgar did say that he would love to build an A400M transport plane.