Although Fenix Simulations did originally say that we would see weekly updates from them as development progressed, the team instead decided to focus their time on ensuring the plane was moving along at a good pace and slow down the initial weekly previews. Whilst there haven’t been any feature reviews for a little while, the team did today decide to post a whole host of new information and previews to demonstrate that the Fenix A320 for Microsoft Flight Simulator is moving along nicely.
Electrical Feature Review
The feature reviews provided by Fenix Simulations serve as an in-depth look at how specific components function within the aircraft. Over the past few months, we have seen a number of feature previews including a look at the MCDU, the hydraulics and also the pneumatic systems. In today’s update, Aamir goes over the electrical side of things.
In the 54-minute video, Aamir goes into a huge amount of depth to help everyone understand how the electrical systems work, how they interact with the aircraft and also some failures with the electrical system. The video itself is both educational and entertaining, with a nice approach to explaining and demonstrating. It’s well worth watching to help understand just how in-depth the simulation will be.
Overall Development Update
As mentioned earlier, the development team is harnessing all their efforts to squash bugs and continue to improve the aircraft. In the last 5 months, the team has fixed roughly 200 bugs. Some were smaller in scale, but others took the team entire code rewrites in order to fix.
The aircraft itself isn’t the only focus for the Fenix Simulations team. They have also been working on infrastructure deployment.
With regards to the soundscape, Aamir said that development is “is slowly starting to pick up pace.” Whilst there is nothing to preview yet, he said that he wouldn’t be more excited about what’s to come.
Flight Model
Work continues to refine the flight model for the Fenix A320. The team said that the aircraft’s flight model was rewritten in the past few months, which has helped with ensuring the automatics of the aircraft are as reliable as possible. In a new video demonstrating an RNAV approach with a 30kt crosswind.
In another video, an Alpha tester showcased another interesting trait of the A320 itself; the pitch change when selecting flap 2 during flight. In the video below, you can see how when flap 2 is deployed, the aircraft changes its pitch dramatically and a bout a positive vertical speed momentum comes with it. Fenix Simulations A320 replicates this.
The EFB
When we last saw the EFB, it had only really just started being developed. A few months on and the EFB has made some nice progression.
The first of these updates to be demonstrated is the ability to draw on the EFB. You will be able to add your own annotations and notes to help you be as prepared as possible. What’s cooler is that if you use night mode for the charts, the colour of your notes will invert. You can see it in action in the video below.
It also works on the iPad too, outside of the simulator.
Other features for the EFB include a new landing distance calculator, which will visually represent your landing distance, and also the ability to link to SimBrief.
Aamir also said that the EFB has been built and designed in a way that means the apps and actual EFB software can be updated without a need to update the whole aircraft. This means software updates can be done automatically and will happen when they’re pushed out by the development team.
Wrapping Up
Concluding the development and feature review post, Aamir said that the team is about to dive into an intensive and critical part of the dev phase. Updates moving forward will be a little quieter and will only be shared when something is ready to be shown. Despite what others are saying about Sim Update 7, released last month, Aamir had some positive words to say from a development standpoint: “Sim Update 7 has improved our ability to quickly iterate new testing builds, and overall our development rate has accelerated significantly as new updates release for the title.”
Finally, Aamir and the team wishes everyone who follows Fenix Simulations an “awesome holiday season.”
Want to catch up on all things related to the Fenix Simulations A320? Check out the other feature reviews including the pneumatic systems, CDPLC functionality and also the MCDU and FMGS. You can also read our first-look article and also the Fenix A320 announcement post to learn more.
