Developer of the much-anticipated A330, Aerosoft’s Mathijs Kok has published details on the Aerosoft forum regarding the Electronic Flight Bag for the upcoming Airbus A330 for P3D.
Mathijs started by posting a screenshot of the Elecronic Flight Bag in action from the flight deck of the A330. The screenshot shows the final layout of the EFB that includes main tabs running along the top and sub categories down the left hand side. The tabs at the top describe the types of information you can access, such as charts (these can be direct from Navigraph or NavDataPro), flight calculator for working out trims for takeoff and landing, weather, documentation, flows, and checklists to efficiently operate the aircraft. There will also be 3rd party support through the final tab. Aerosoft has already added PMDG Global Operations and OnAir support, still leaving room for other developments.
The EFB has the ability to be popped out into a 2D panel (currently awaiting a bezel) like the PFD. The EFB will not be used to control the aircraft doors or loadouts, this will be managed via the third MCDU as mentioned in an earlier post.
Due to complexity, Mathijs is unable to comment further as to whether the EFB panel will be available on both positions in the event of a connected flightdeck. If this feature is available, it will have to be a carbon copy of the original EFB. This is due to only being able to support one browser within P3D and to ease CPU usage.
The EFB will support PFPX and Simbrief flight plan and dispatch documentation as you can see from the screenshots below. This will save switching between two windows or printing.
Alongside the comments regarding the EFB, Mathijs also made comments about other aspects of the development, one of which are the difficulties with RealLight and PBR texturing compatibility. Mathijs and the team have taken the decision to not work with TFDi RealLight for the A330 as this produces complications with the PBR texturing. Aerosoft has chosen to go with a simpler alternative to rectify the issue.
There have also been some issues with landing gear animations, which is due to the limitation of P3D. Lockheed Martin has told Aerosoft that the limitations will not be addressed in the near future and therefore the A330 will be released with the current landing gear animation. Mathijs has described the current animation as ‘it doesn’t look bad, just not as good as we like’. He did hint that Microsoft may include the development with the release of MSFS2020. This would suggest the team is looking forward to working with Microsoft on the release of the simulator.
The developer has added an icing effect that allows the A330 to build up 700 kilograms worth of ice. This amount of icing will effect systems and aerodynamics as it would in real life such as fuel flow.
Testers have been using the A330 alongside the newly released UGCX, which is described to work really well with the type.
Mathijs has promised to provide a video of the working EFB and possibly the landing gear animation within the next week. Aerosoft still has 2019 in its sights for the release of the A330 for P3D.
