DEHowie

Just wanted to reach out to say thanks for the several messages here and off board plus discord regarding the post i put up a big thanks. Also to clarify I "do not get paid" by FSlabs I and other testers do it because we want to share our knowledge and experience with the community. As someone not being paid as can be backed up by any non paid testers you have absolutely no responsibility to be a mouthpiece for those you assist with your expertise. One of the sad things in flight simulation is consumers dont get to see the utterly huge amount of work to get an addon out the door. In fact I dont know as programming this stuff is so far beyond my pay grade that it still stuns me that these addons even exist for the tiny amount of money they cost. To then get a product like the FSlabs that flies almost exactly the real aircraft does, i can use every real world technique and get the same results ie decel times, distances and speed reductions is a true testament to how far flight simulation has come since Sublogic in the 80's. The "assumption" we do it(Beta testing) for money couldn't be further from the truth. I mean until MSFS came along devs where battling to scratch a living even the biggest name devs. We do it for nothing because to those involved at this level our expertise adds the edge to make things as truly accurate as possible. To give you some idea the tuning that went into just getting the rotation characteristics absolutely spot on dragged on over months of revised ELAC simulations. I am always happy to answer questions via pm re the Bus and Boeing as its about "sharing" to improve knowledge just as i have for two decades in my airline and another decade prior to that in GA. In a few weeks i will be on a stream doing a comparison of Airbus and Boeing emergency procedures and how the philosophies of them vary in similar emergency scenarios. Again for free to help the community learn and share some of our knowledge on a very complex subject on two very different aircraft A321 and B777. Ill pop a video in here just to add to what i raised re AP pitch authority and just how poor the Airbus is at following path at various times. The first is while configuring to fly an RNP AR where the AP lacks the extra G authority provided in GS ie flying an ILS. This is not a "sometimes thing" its an every flight thing. You can see immediately after the Flap 2 call what happens to the Vdev indicator as the aircraft balloons up climbing away from the desired path. You wont see the Fenix do this period along with other "features" Airbus popped into the family! https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Webposting/i-WRQKXF7/0/KrkRTJQzMKpwd4VSNqWbKvX5fXR9HnfmnpfCBprh5/1920/IMG_7255-1920.mp4 One more at showing even in Expedite mode which has 100% more G authority than in managed or open descent. it can never keep up with the increasing speed on an expedite descent. Having done a couple of hundred of these this is how it lags on EVERY single one speed lagging behind target never really nudging 0.79 only getting to the magenta target when it hits 340kts. Yes the dreaded Expedite mode feared by Airbus pilots worldwide who are happy to sit at 338kts in a managed descent speed surfing up at the top of the speed window but not at 340 with double the AP pitch authority to assist in the event of a wind change. https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Webposting/i-ZKFtXBh/0/MPfj2bT7tZnQFn9tShjh7JrWCQtmjkWsTbfzrqFkQ/1920/IMG_9579-1920.mp4 Enjoy your Buses what ever you choose to fly just know we have invested a huge amount of effort to get the FSlabs to have and show as much of the Airbus's true character 99% great but sometimes. To be able to share that is why we do it for NOTHING. Now wheres my Concorde...

Greetings, Having read though this thread i am happy to add some factual information on the A320 family and some of its more unique features benefits issues and differences from conventional aircraft. Why do i say conventional well thats because as an aircraft it is fundamentally very different on many levels but i will focus on flight controls and why the aircraft is so stable and why the concept of it being so is exactly how the real aircraft flies. First i spent just over 15 years on the 320/321 and 330 gathering just over 10,000 flying hours on them 9200 in the left seat. These days im very lucky to fly the incredible 787. Many of those where spent training, educating and illuminating/checking people on that family particularly at the technical level so feel i can add something to this discussion. I have been a beta tester for several company's including FSlabs for 2 and a half decades so i have a handle of exactly what is in my opinion needed to accurately reflect flight "character" in a home simulator. I use the word character as when you fly these aircraft they build a personality have traits you come to like and some dislike and to me that is the "essesnce" of what a platform needs to capture not just "look" like the aircraft but capture its character. I will split this into two parts first a holistic viewpoint and then some technical aspects that give the A320 family its outstanding handling characteristics AND its flaws and why those are equally as important to be simulated correctly. I have been thinkling about an answer for what is asked frequently about the core differences between fenix and FSlabs and why FSlabs is viewed so highly by the real Airbus community particularly those who deal with the training side in airlines. I'll change it around first as to what i nd many others who have been lucky enough to fly the real aircraft on what makes the FSlabs holistically more real than Fenix and why i find Fenix so sterile and lacking in character. I have owned Fenix since day 1 and many may remember by post highlighting a few of the hundreds of issues it released with. Many where critical of my post effectively showering what was an addon full of inaccuracies and bugs as a saviour of the flight sim world. Well many many updates later a complete cockpit rebuild(one of my chief criticisms) its much better than it was but it still has a multitude of accuracy and simply incorrect functionality issues. So many i find t frustrating to fly as it has none of the soul and noce of the character so important to me in an addon. Without capturing the soul you ar emissing the essence of what an Airbus is like to fly good and bad. Now many people will not care thats fine by me but when you know that family of aircraft so well i do care and hence why i have helped to fine tune what i consider the closest to life addon ever released for the home platform one that does capture the soul and essence of Airbus flying the good and bad. To try to help relate to how i feel about the differences in these two addons(please note i wont talk about Toliss a its a different topic) from a holistic view Lets just say you have a really good friend you have known for years and years and you know their character intimately all the traits, foibles, issues and have come to love them. Those traits you endear some of which may be both interest9ing and challenging but all together they make them who they are and for many reasons why you are good friends you respect them. Then one day imagine a computer cyborg replacement takes their place in life looking identical with many of the good characteristics of their character but none of the foibles or issues they do everything perfectly which is certainly what your best friend never did. All the finer points which set them apart from every other person is missing all of the character is gone leaving a hollow perfect shell Your now very boring friend who is certainly not the lifelong friend you know so well is gone with none of the issues, interesting traits all gone washed away in a sea of zero's and ones with none of the character of the real person/aeroplane. When you spend a decade and a half in a real aeroplane their character just like a friend develops and you learn all that makes them what they are. This is why i got involved with FSlabs as a tester because they where intent on capturing the character of the Bus family not just the systems but how it "felt" to fly not just how to drive a home PC aeroplane. The charcteristic/charcter of an aeroplane is what sets them all apart similar to people and the strengths weaknesses are one of the most important parts as those are the things that are memorable. Not the 3000 perfect ILS approaches but the hopeless behavior of the AP in some instances that only one dev in ANY sim captures thats FSLabs. Thats because the devs listen to the pilots and our stories some funny some not so and build a painting of what the real Airbus is like not just 0's and 1's. A dev who actually "listens" which is rare these day ie Asobo and then interprets real world handling and discussion of flight characteristics then somehow manages to turn that into an accurate model of reality both good and bad. To me this is golden and incredibly rare and to me there are only two on the market in civilian sims FSlabs and PMDG that seem to capture that. In a similar vein to how Heatblur did such an incredible job on the DCS F-14 and to hear ex Tomcat pilots talk with such conviction about how well it simulates the mighty F-14. I have learnt a lot about the real Airbus from fellow pilots trying to push the boundaries of whats possible in terms of accuracy and systems while participating in this process so yes even real world pilots can learn from devs! There is a phrase we use "to be FSlabbed" ie learn something about the real aircraft from the addon. This is what grabs me about the Labs and has from when i first used it way back in P3DV3. From a technical standpoint lets discuss the handling which it seems is grabbing some attention because the FSlabs doesn't fly like "other aircraft. Well this is perfectly intentional and ill discuss exactly why the feeling of rails is EXACTLY what you get in the real jet and WHY. Ok, first the Airbus "family" do not use conventional laws or controls in maintaining or adjusting this aircraft's flight path. It uses multiple separate flight control computers to monitor adjust and respond the aircraft flight path to control inputs, this is extremely NON conventional and far from how any non fly by wire(FBW) aircraft flies. It flies far more differently than my current aircraft the 787. Lets look at something simply like the sidestick. Unlike normal aircraft the sidestick does not directly control elevator or aileron position. It does so as a side effect of what is being commanded. What is being commanded is in pitch a "G" loading and in roll a "roll rate". This means with nil sidestick movement ie centered the aircraft will fly with 1G in pitch this can be in a climb, descent or level. Any movement or disturbance will be met with immediate correction. This means in pitch roll and yaw the Airbus is both dynamically and statically stable. This leads to a fantastic stable flight experience that makes it such a joy to hand fly. It also leads to handling issues for new and older pilots coming to the type. When banking immediate elevator correction is applied to stop any sink generated by rolling making it fantastic to fly in the circuit or by hand in general. The single biggest myth of Airbus is its an autopilots aeroplane NOTHING could be further from reality especially with the restrictions placed on the Ap responses by Airbus themself giving it poor responsiveness and making it the single most criticized element in the aircraft. Lets discuss straight and level with the sidestick centered ie commanding 1G and Zero roll rate any disturbance is naturally countered by the aircrafts ELAC and SEC plus FAC computers. They sense the uncommanded roll and immediately apply a countering command to stop ANY uncommanded aircraft motion. This creates handling issues for young and new pilots to type as pilots we naturally react applying opposite stick inputs now telling the aircraft which is rolling left and which will come back to wings level that you want o to actually roll to the right. This directly leads to an excessive correction leading now to an opposite requirement to go back to level having over corrected. In turbulent conditions over controlling the A320 was the single biggest handling issue that needed correction from new pilots to the type. Many still went on to still over control the type and many do to THIS DAY. The family is fundamentally stable in all three axis and if left untouched ie zero inputs when disturbed it will return to exactly where it was left. For instance your climbing zero stick inputs and you hit a gust which causes an increase in lift ie speed increase this directly leads to a increase in G, uncommanded G as the sidestick is centered ie commanding 1G. The aircraft will immediately reduce that G back to 1G ie lower the nose to maintain flight path that was commanded ie 1G. A320/330 etc dont roll away or pitch up and diverge like conventional non FBW aircraft do they remain on commanded flight path corrected by the flight laws that the aircraft operates under. In turbulence yes you will gat some divergence but nothing of the order i see for instance in a conventional aircraft ie 737. As i said before in turbulence pilots old habits die hard and in this video you can see some of its amazing stability at work in an engine failure scenario. This something we demonstrate during type rating training to show people exactly how gentle and how STABLE ie on rails the Airbus is all because f its amazing flight control laws. Skip to about 1min 30 and watch what happens during an engine failure. it is the perfect example of why Airbus and FBW aircraft like the 787 i fly now cannot be compared at ANY level with other aircraft handling characteristics. As you can see even in an engine failure the aircraft remains basically semi wings level with full yaw damper applied leading to an incredibly stable flight path even on one engine with ZERO control inputs. To dd the 787 has full automatic rudder compensation once airborne so on one engine you just use the rudder as if you normally would ie minimally on a transport aircraft. This directly leads to the fact that the A320 family has without a doubt in my experience the easiest to fly most stable controllable experience in any civilian aircraft. Its stability when being hand flown create an amazing sense of trust and an purely enjoyable hand flying experience. When training we frequently push the concept of flying the aircraft with only your fingertips to reduce control inputs and over controlling seen incredibly frequently on line checks and in the simulator. It takes the Top Gun phrase of "Holding on to tight" to a new area where you need this emphasized to new Airbus pilots, and some old..lol. This video highlights exactly what im talking about we called this "stirring the pot" and you can directly see large sidestick inputs directly lead to excessive roll corrections on multiple times where the aircraft is already correcting and then a large sidestick input results in an excessive corrections resulting in a requirement for even more corrections. Its effectively a pilot induce oscillation ie PIO a phrase im sure many of you know. Again the stability of the A320 family is renowned and hence the feeling of being on "rails" ie not diverging when disturbed is an exact replica of what we see in both the aircraft and full motion sim. Id highly recommend a session in a full motion A320 sim and now i don't mean something like a home built job but a Cat D full standard airline sim to see exactly how stable the aircraft can be in still air. To add the Airbus has no "curves" on the stick its purely linear in both roll rate(degrees per sec) and G loading and why i can use every technique i used in the real aircraft with the exact same responses in the FSLabs and why i enjoy it so much. Fenix i cannot use any of my landing technique styles with the correct results. A great example of over controlling Skip to around the 2min mark to see what we called stirring the pot. I honestly believe many people see this and think "wow it really does take a lot of flying" well no it takes a fraction of whats going on in this video a perfect example of what im talking about ie over controlling leading to further oscillations. With all good things come bad and for an aircraft which has a reputation for being an autopilot on aircraft thats where the bad stuff is. Its quite interesting to see the sim community has like many in the aviation community the thought Airbus autopilots are some magic thing when in fact they are one of the worst AP's on the civilian market. This is caused by the Airbus decision to limit AP authority which directly leads to significant control issues in pitch. The G limits means the nose can be left hanging high with speed washing off(this directly lead to the Toulouse A330 test flight crash) or nose low speed increasing and G limits slowing the pitch up. This is something Fenix has omitted entirely from its Airbus family one of the biggest "features" of flying an A320 that has caught out EVERY Airbus pilot at some point. In general these moments occur at the worst time on approach at lower levels and lead directly to much FCU spinning if "not allowed for". The A320 family autopilot is significantly G limited in response in pitch positively and even more so negatively. Ie the nose comes up slowly and goes down very very slowly this applies in all phases of flight except when on an ILS approach where higher response rates are used. Higher G authority are also used when in EXPEDITE mode something unsimulated in fact Fenix doesn't simulate expedite at all a bug existent from launch. Ive seen at least 4 occasions where the AP had to be disconnected due to excessively slow pitch down. Heres the common theme. Your climbing into a jetstream at say 29000 and the wind jumps from 90 to 130 kts rapidly. Well the Ap brings up the nose to bring the speed back to the target climb speed bringing the nose higher and higher then at exactly the right moment the wind dies by 40kts and your left nose high speed now rapidly decreasing and the AP has not enough G authority to lower the nose to stop a rapid speed decline. The only option is an AP disconnect and manually flying. It can even get worse of your approaching a selected altitude as it may go ALT* leaving you in a very very bad position. This is exactly how a tesA330 aircraft crashed at Toulouse killing all on board when the AP ALT* captured an altitude on one engine causing s stall and spin at low altitude, yes you can stall an Airbus The only Airbus on the home sim market which accurately reflects the unique handling of the A320 family right now is the FSlabs from the beautiful stable hand flying behavior to the autopilots sloppy G response capability. This also means when flying non precision approaches in its very sloppy leading to significant exceedences when under G ie configuring to land ie balloon behavior that has caught every Airbus pilot in the world at some point Sorry for the long response but i feel its worth discussing some of the unique behavior of the Airbus family and why technically its like that. If you think it flies on rails again go into a sim center hire a sim and take it for a fly it will not only be awesome fun but educational you will see just how stable and beautiful it is to fly in reality. I loved my time flying the minibus around and its left many happy memories and that's why i have spent many hours in the flight deck taking notes, taking and measuring times to ensure the drag model is spot on and paying attention to exactly how it flies. To people who enjoy the real aircraft its important to see it portrayed"as it is" not just half way there missing the character. We would spend many words on the flight deck training discussing how the Bus is different from "conventional" aircraft from sidestick usage to how it flies to FMC behaviour etc and my biggest compliment to the Devs at FSlabs is they take this seriously and want a product that IS flying exactly like a real A320. Likewise the real world pilots on the test team who spent hundreds of hours testing tuning etc to get the P3D model to behave so accurately have done the same work to bring that to MSFS. No doubt like and piece of home software as issues arise and they will they will be looked at and adjusted as required to ensure that the Labs remains the most accurate handling Airbus to see the light of day. Any questions just ask ill get back to you when i can with a busy flying schedule over Christmas and a lot of time away from home.

Its quite ridiculous that people like myself are capable of removing these clouds in our ortho imagery for xplane i have built yet Microsoft and Asobo some how cannot. To make this worse the areas most affected are some of the best places in the world to fly like Alaska and Colombia. Id even be happy with the over saturated Asobo ortho than cloud covered stuff. Bizarre they have fixed New Guinea one of the most cloud prevalent ortho locations but not Alaska or Colombia.. My Colombia in XP Asobo's version. One more of my hand corrected Colombia and seriously if individuals and devs can do this the only thing stopping Asbob is effort.

One thing i find completely bizarre about the MSFS community is the complete lack of understanding about real aircraft. There seems an overall feel that all aircraft are the same and somehow by owning a 777 you are getting an identical experience to having an MD-11 or any other widebody. Just to clarify the MD-11 used some of the best aspects of the Airbus MCDU AND the Boeing one leading to what is even to this day one of the most advanced FMC's ever seen. Having been fortunate to fly the 717 which uses the same system its still more advanced in most ways than any Airbus system and also has features not seen in the most advanced Boeing product the 787. The concept of flight simulation is to be able to get a look at how and why aircraft are different and what makes them different and challenging to operate. A heavy MD-11 is a truly challenging aircraft to fly with very high approach speeds particularly in emergency situations far higher than any 777/787 or 747. At higher weights it takes a lot of thought again far more so than the generally very forgiving 777/787 family. The 777W and 787-9 can be a little trick it max weights but nothing approaching the challenge of a max weight mad dog. Anyone thinking that by buying the MD-11 you are somehow duplicating and will get an identical experience to that of a 777 is very mistaken indeed. Very high igh approach speeds, challenging handling characteristics, very high initial climb speeds at max weights making SID's and on arrival STARS very tricky to negotiate mean its a far more challenging aircraft to operate. The MD-11 became an aerodynamic compromise that gave it very challenging handling traits that hopefully TFDI have built in to the addon so fingers crossed its every bit the beast the real aircraft is. So expand your horizons dont think any addon will be the same as every other addon because just like the real world every aircraft is different some easier to fly ie 777 some far more difficult MD-11. And its a great looking aircraft..lol..sad to see them go in a few years time as they are so great to photograph and looking at it TFDI has done it justice.

If you think reflections are an issue in the DC-6 I would recommend you stay well away from a glass cockpit where they are ever present and can be exceptionally distracting. No complaints here about the DC-6 and its panels. Darren Howie

I'll answer from the perspective of someone who has been flying for 31 years and an A-330 and A-320 Captain plus flown Boeing as well. First the aircraft are not "antique" as you put it. The DC-6 and DC-4 plus a whole pile of others are still earning a living in various parts of the world flying into airports no A320 or 737 would ever considered safe going. The aircraft are far more challenging to fly for several reasons. No FMGC to make life easy and you actually have to "know" how to fly to fly it. The aircraft is far more sensitive to operate. Try ramming the throttles forward on a DC-6 and see what happens with no FADEC to protect the pilots ham fistedness. The aircraft is far more interesting to operate with complicated fuel system and multi stage superchargers plus fuel temps oil consumption etc. Finally no modern aircraft other than the C130 can pull the payloads into these incredibly poorly equipped airports in some of the most remote places in the world. In short no other aircraft modern or otherwise is anywhere near replacing them so far from being antique they are still the most cost efficient reliable means of large payload transport we have today. Oh and they are brilliant aircraft. If you want "antique" just look at the 737 Max overhead panel now that is a true antique a disorganised shambles of switches scattered from side to side and top to bottom. Anyway you may want to try Xplane it handles far better the "feel" of flying an aircraft compared to the other one and I spent a lot of years playing and testing on it.