Flight simulation has always thrived on the community coming together to create new add-ons to continue enhancing the simulators that we use and love today. For some in Prepar3D, Tomatoshade was a freeware tool that helped many, whilst in X-Plane 11, the Zibo 737 is an unstoppable force of quality freeware that is considered to be a highly realistic rendition of the aircraft in that simulator. Despite being released just 10 days ago, Microsoft Flight Simulator fans have already started working on improving the default aircraft to take it to the next level.
On a Github repository owned by user wpine215, an all-new mod for the default Airbus A320Neo has already gained traction and several updates that already significantly improves on the included aircraft in the new simulator. This new repository enables users to download a modification to the default aircraft and add various improvements to the aircraft including more accurate APU start-up times, new ECAM pages and a fix to the fuel consumption of the aircraft. Whilst these are just minor changes, it’s the start of something new.
As seen in the roadmap Trello board, named “Study Level A320neo”, the team has plans to bring a host of functionality to the aircraft with numerous updates. This includes everything from fixing the fonts, to all-new systems to make this a realistic rendition of the aircraft. Best of all, this project is completely freeware for the community to download, install and fly. Of course, this is still new software, so expect plenty of bugs and issues, but there is a lot of promise. As we’ve seen from similar projects in the past, this could turn out to be a huge release for the Microsoft Flight Simulator community going forward. It’s worth noting the development project and team has yet to receive an official name.
The most recently released stable version of the Airbus A320Neo modification is 0.1.1. The full feature list is down below. New updates are planned, but no release time frames or schedules are provided, which is understandable from a project of this kind. That said, the GitHub repository will provide you with all the details, download instructions and a FAQ to get you started.
This is a project we will be keeping a very close eye on over the coming weeks and months and of course continue to update you with the progress.
You can watch the progress on their Discord channel.
0.1.1
- Removed INOP property from all ECAM page buttons
- Added APU ECAM page
- Added Door ECAM page
- Added Bleed ECAM page placeholder
- Fixed fuel consumption
- Fixed APU startup time
- Added MODE change indication to Navigation Display
Let us know in the comments section below if you’ve tried this mod. What did you think? Could this be the Zibo 737 Mod of Microsoft Flight Simulator?
Update 11:00am Zulu 28-Aug-2020: Added in the information that the project has no ‘official’ name and a Discord link.
