Aamir

Probably not, but perhaps if XP13 has something interesting! Never say never, as they say. No plans now though. Kinda in between, here. ProSim is a platform agnostic software solution - but that does not mean it's particularly easy to get it working with X, Y, or Z sims. It just means the system simulation runs agnostic to whatever platform it's in, but this then poses some significant technical hurdles in building and packaging it for consumer purposes. Displays, being a major hurdle for one - as does flight dynamics, flight modelling, and any/all interactions with the sim. It's more or less the same deal as taking PMDG's 737 and porting it into MSFS from P3D. Just different challenges, but same principal. Platform agnostic doesn't mean instant compatibility with anything, and oftentimes something built to be agnostic is more challenging to shoe horn into a single platform solution. I guess, the point is - we could have done anything - built it for XP, built it for P3D, heck - even Flight Gear. Picked MSFS as it made the most sense.

It was actually not compatible, we spent nearly 2 years beating it into working with MSFS, hence the sim releasing in 2020 and us coming out in 2022.

Go on, I'll get in on the speculation thread. Love a good stab in the dark. It will be a free update for 2020 owners, to 2024 - as part of their 10 year plan. BUT. Core engine only. You're not going to get any of the new shiny content they're planning on bringing to it, but you will get the core sim and all your FS2020 content. From what I can see this is the same engine 2020 is running on, they're presumably going to ship this with some big updates to the engine, but nothing inherently shockingly different. It's a bug fixing, brush up, and extend exercise, with some sequel branding to it. Why do I think this? Well, look at Dovetail Games and what they do with Trainsim. It's updated with a "new title" every year or so, TS2019, TS2020, etc etc etc. Owners of the last title get the new one for free, but none of the new content. Just what they had, and core engine improvements, UI update, QOL updates, new graphics and what have you. But none of the "new" content. Makes sense from the server/streaming perspective, for cost purposes, to just have everyone on one new platform, instead of trying to support two at once. Also, think about it this way. Why invest a crapload of money into releasing free content like the ini A310, AN225, and having WT update the 787 and all that stuff, if they're just going to throw it out the window next year? And why bother update 2020 even now? And why risk customers not purchasing marketplace content for fear it will be wiped in a year? Because it will all probably roll over. Probably. That's just my guess anyway. The real answer? Who knows. I certainly don't. We'll find out soon though, I bet 🙂

Not true, it's possible - it's just a lot of work. We'll get to it eventually, but after V2.

The CFMs will get everything the IAEs do, except the engine model, which will be added later.

They have to be compliant with the real world modes/rules. What was done here was tuning the parameter responses and controllers to achieve the correct intended result and fixing bugs inhibiting certain parameters from working under the conditions they should have been working in before, and adjusting some of the code to better represent the real world modes.

Would probably recommend opening a new topic about it!

Many thanks! Excited to bring new stuff to you guys soon 🙂

I don't think we've ever come even close to claiming the product is 100% perfection.

Just to confirm - the software update won't be coming today, of that I can assure you. But a peek behind the curtains, perhaps.

Weeeeeeell. It is one year of the Fenix being launched today. Maybe a little text will come outta me. Maybe..

There isn't much fancy or flashy to show off just yet, but it's coming together nicely now - I'm personally very pleased with the progress we've made in the last few weeks. Sorry for being cryptic, but it's more or less how it goes even in the later stages of development. I'm sure you'll get some fancy worded up material eventually, but with customers pushing us hard to get this out ASAP, the time it'll take to put together videos or updates like that is just better spent with my head down, working on something.

They don't. The data packages for newer Boeing stuff is actually locked down even more.

See point 3. They won't sell it to you.

To this, I would posit a conundrum to you. To do it right, you don't need some documents, you need the documents - the heart and brain of the airplane, so to speak. All the ECAM logic, etc. Along with all-access to the maintenance manuals, but that is probably a little less sensitive. Now, this can be purchased, for the price of a small apartment building in a small city, if they sell it to you. Why? To develop training applications. Now, this means there are a couple of problems: 1) There is a per license installation fee. Per license. How much? Buy a nice brand-new Benz off the lot, you're probably close. So, not £49.99. 2) It is absolutely prohibited for anything but training. 3) They don't just sell it to anyone that would write a cheque, they want to know what you're doing with it. Soooooo... would they let us have it for free in exchange for a revenue share? Unfortunately, there's not much sense in them doing that for us - they risk us building something that undercuts the entire training market with the same data-access as the training market, for nothing. It won't fly. Forget about the fact that the revenue share we would bring them would be a percentage, of a morsel, of their daily revenue. In 1 year. Unless we gave them all our revenue. In which case it's just a percentage of a slightly larger morsel of their daily revenue. Not all of Airbus. Just the training department 😁 We also have an official relationship with Airbus. They have a very small percentage of our revenue for a licensing fee, allowing us to call it an "Airbus A320". This comes with some support here and there, but hardly anything near enough to build an airplane, and certainly no "detailed" documentation. No idea what PMDG's relationship is like with Boeing of course, so cannot comment on that.

That's... not the problem. Everything has just moved to a highly digitised platform. While it can still be gotten, it's just harder to do. It makes things easier and better for MROs and maintenance folks, and tougher for people that want to try and "build" the aircraft - because you can't just get the AMM as a PDF or something like that anymore. Wiring diagrams, etc, all the same. The other problem is that nowadays, there are certain documents that aren't even on these digital platforms anymore that are important to building something like an Airbus aircraft. Certain backend ECAM logic etc isn't really necessary to be distributed any longer, so they simply.. don't. Whereas for the A320, you can find this stuff on Google. This usually means you need to build things backward, and that turns it from a 3 year project, to a 6-7 year project (to do right), which just kinda makes it a little bit of a commercially poor decision - you could release two full products for the time it takes to build an A350, and with significantly less trouble/unknowns. Even if you had all that stuff - it's still quite a few years of effort due to the complexity of the airplane. Ultimately, I'm sure there'll be an A350 from somewhere eventually, but for a full-fat maximum fidelity module, I reckon you'd be waiting a little while. I'm the biggest A350 fan on the planet, and I'd love to build one at Fenix, but with what I can see in front of me, the business is just better served building other stuff.

I think the absolute funniest thing about this argument is that even if some consumer sim or the other were being used in a Level-D scenario, its literal only purpose is to serve as a scenery generator. Just read that again. A scenery generator. You're arguing about what the best scenery generator is. Nothing else. No avionics, no flight dynamics, nothing. Data-pack level-D stuff comes as closed loop (sometimes binary) software. It doesn't interface or talk to the sim in any way/shape/form short of using it as a visual generator. Not even the flight dynamics, which again, is closed loop and injected. It's all its own thing. Data-pack software _can_ be used with whatever sim you like, even MSFS, if you're willing to pay $$$$$$ for it, and a software team to integrate it (if they even sell you a data-pack, which many won't if you're not accredited in some way) - but it simply won't be certified for training as even the visual/scenery generator has a number of targets (lighting and such) it must hit before it is certified, which I do not believe any of your home desktop sims are capable of doing. Not to level-D standard anyway. But make no mistake, they can be used for simpler training, and can be certified for other stuff in the fixed-base world. All the level-D stuff I've seen is running some custom solution or the other. Unity or something like that.

I don't really have much to comment on the whole EFB thing, but people are really quite hard on Robert and his PR strategy for some reason. From a developer's standpoint I can't help but feel for him - we're all in similar situations, which is damned if you do, damned if you don't. Development is fundamentally boring, it's not flash and razzmatazz 99.9% of the time. The flourish, the fun parts, the result - all comes together in the last 0.1% of it, when the final picture is put together. This, ultimately, is what the customer is accustomed to, and this is what the customer expects to see all the time when a developer opens their mouth to say something. Showing something that looks cool at 50% of the way in, with another 50% to go, is also a death sentence, because then people will complain that it "looks done so why hasn't it been deployed yet", without much understanding that there's only so much functionality a pretty front-end has and while it all looks cool, it's far from usable. If you speak, and speak often, to let people know where you are and how things are progressing, without showing any CoolStuffTM, you're also doomed - as people will simply say "shut up and get on with it", but if you shut up and get on with it, people will complain that "they haven't given us a status update in X months, is the project dead?", and so the solution is to update people often with CoolStuffTM - which while technically not impossible, is improbable to produce, screws up development roadmapping for the sake of PR (which is just poor project management), and even if you do, the end result is: "man, these guys sure show a lot of stuff but seemingly never deliver!". Ultimately, every company chooses their PR strategy based on what their leadership feels is right, and ultimately every strategy will leave some people upset about some shortcoming or the other.

It is also inaccurate in principal. There's a polling rate, it is constantly checking to see if aircraft is "on ground" and then captures the FPM when onground=1. It polls for this, i.e it does not just know when the aircraft has touched down, it is pinging every second/half a second/whatever the developer has set it to ping at, and it is entirely and commonly possible that you have landed in between these polling points.

Yes, the single engine behaviour/performance is being looked at under a microscope for the V2 update. There is already a new asymmetric thrust rudder controller that has been implemented to help improve the handling characteristics of the aircraft when OEI in the development build, it responds really nicely so far. One piece of the puzzle of course. But we're not just working on making the thrust correct and leaving it at that!

Has been improved a substantial amount in the next version - not released yet, but in due course.

This is perfect, thanks!

That's... very odd. Could you DM me a video of it please?

I'm not sure what it could trigger exactly without replicating the issue which I have not been able to do - but what I can say is that the recommendation resolved issues for people with the same problem, the FWC is a really complicated thing to try to debug because it has a number of timings built into it - but, with that being said we're trying to figure out what the problem is in the interim.

The flight warning computer monitors the TL position, this is used to feed data for certain states, such as Go-Around, etc - so if you haven't calibrated your throttle or there's a minor jump detected out of the detent, this can confuse the flight warning computer and it will trigger the sort of errors you see.