Now Available “Big Fenix Update” Slated for Release This Week

Update: The Big Fenix Update is now available to download, completely free of charge.

In a comprehensive video released on the company’s YouTube channel, Fenix Simulations’ CEO Aamir Thacker announced on Sunday that the highly-anticipated Big Fenix Update will be releasing this week on either Tuesday 29 or Wednesday 30 July.

The update brings an absolute tonne of features, bug fixes, improvements, and crucially full compatibility with FS24. FS24-specific features such as the walkaround mode are now supported natively by addon.

The video update, coming in at just under 30 minutes length, is far too detailed to cover entirely in a single article, however we’ll be giving a summary of some of the big ticket items below.

MSFS 2024 Support

The headline of this announcement is that the Fenix A32X aircrafts now natively support the MSFS 2024 platform. The video even starts with a depiction of the addon working with the walkaround mode, showing the player character walking up the air stairs and into the aircraft’s cabin, before making a left into the cockpit. The simmer can simply click on a newly added high-vis vest in the cockpit to enter/exit walkaround mode, or use the key bind within MSFS 2024.

The Fenix team wanted to make the walkaround as immersive as possible, and as such has implemented several fully working external panels which can be accessed in the same way that real-world ground crews do every day. For instance, the refuel panel on the wing can be opened, and the fuel quantity selector is functional. There are also realistic animations for the movement of the lever and door hinges. Forward and aft cargo doors are operable from the outside, the hydraulic service panel (located beneath the wing root) includes some highly detailed texturing of various ports and switches found on the aircraft, and we can even manually connect and disconnect the GPU.

For simmers looking to roleplay the ground-ops side of a flight, these features come together to deliver what, at least on face value, appears to be a highly-immersive exterior experience.

The team has also been hard at work entirely reconstructing the A320 family within FS24’s new modular SimObject architecture. This will improve the aircraft’s performance and asset management by only rendering the assets that are actually needed at any given moment, with Aamir saying that squeezing every ounce of performance out of the aircraft is the team’s highest priority. Fenix has also constructed every asset on the aircraft in at least 4 different levels-of-detail (LODs) to take advantage of FS24’s engine. The newer sim can switch between various levels of detail and scale up as the camera view gets closer and the simmer demands more detail, and conversely scale down as the object gets further away – which significantly boosts performance. Fenix has also devised a method of smoothing the transition between LODs, which should reduce pop-in and jarring mesh changes..

The aircraft’s 750 liveries (as well as about 50 new ones) have all been converted to work with the new model, and the custom cabins that came with some of these have also been made fully compatible with the FS24 update. The EFB also now runs LIDO charts as well as those from Jeppesen (with a Navigraph subscription), and contains a PDF viewer for any user-downloaded charts or some light reading for the cruise. We can even supplant the FS24 default EFB with Fenix’s custom EFB, meaning the EFB can be accessed from outside of the flight deck in the walkaround mode along with all of its inherent functionality.

Baby Sharks

The A319 sharklet variant has now been built and will be available with the Big Fenix Update. A new engine variant is included with this new configuration to match the real world type. The CFM56-5B7 is the higher-thrust option as opposed to the IAE config, and in the real world is fitted to American Airlines’ 319SL fleet. The 5B7 is built to push out the as much thrust as the 5B4 which powers the larger and heavier A320, meaning the 319SL running this engine is a bit “sportier”. Aamir says the baby bus has had its flight dynamics tested and greenlit by a pool of real-world pilots operating this unique type. The addition of the 5B7 brings the total number of available engine configurations for Fenix’s A320 family up to a whopping 7.

Avianca is the only major airline customer running the 319SL with the IAE-V2524 config, and this will also be available within the livery manager.

Working Weather Radar

A functional weather radar is now finally available for simmers on the Navigation Display (ND), previously impossible within MSFS. Gain control is fully functional, which allows the user to tune the radar return’s intensity, but tilt control (controlling the vertical angle of the radar beam) is absent as, according to Aamir, Asobo has not yet exposed the necessary vertical scanning data in MSFS. However, when or if this does become available, the team’s intention is to implement it, with the systems-level groundwork “ready to go” should the required data be made available.

Reworked Landing Dynamics and Other Handling Behaviour

The team have once again gone in and worked up a comprehensive overhaul of the plane’s behaviour during the landing phase. This may require more experienced users of the Fenix to re-learn the feel and handling of the aircraft during the flare, however the team has taken this action according to onboard readout data from over 800,000 real world landings. The enhancements to flare logic, in particular pitch control land ground effect tuning, should result in an aircraft which ‘plants’ more convincingly during touchdown and less of a floaty sensation.

That same dataset of 800,000 flights has also lead into an all-axis retune of the fly-by-wire controls and handling. Aamir notes that now following these tweaks, Fenix is now recommending a totally linear control sensitivity curve when using the addon for best results. The team has also now simulated some of the control input damping dynamics, particularly on the roll axis, meaning the SDS feature is now depreciated.

The rudder axis has been reworked as part of this update too, building into FS24’s new ground handling model. This is also tuned around a linear control axis as a starting point, according to Aamir.

Reworked Sounds

The team have gone in and once again recreated the entire sound set for the A320, following multiple reference visits to see the real aircraft and obtain recordings at the source. This means lots of little details will now be making their way into the sim, for instance the tonality and pitch of the PACKS being tied to the heat demand being requested from them at any given moment.

Fenix has also made a “major breakthrough” in regards to sound attenuation within MSFS. Previously, sounds coming from outside the aircraft couldn’t be attenuated depending on your position within the aircraft relative to open doors and windows. However the team has overcome this to produce a single seamless and dynamic sound set which calculates and applies occlusion, meaning you will hear (for example) the blaring APU louder when standing right next to the L1 door versus sat in row 17 of the cabin.

There’s a lot more to this update than we could possibly cover in a single article, so we suggest watching the video to get the full inside scoop.