My Hands-on Impression of the Synaptic Simulations A220

One of the coolest things about coming to Flight Sim Expo every year is getting a chance to see all of the industry’s latest and greatest names showing off the very best they have to offer. Whether that’s hardware, software, sceneries, aircraft, utilities or other solutions – the show floor is packed full of opportunities to get hands-on time with the most exciting developments in flight sim.

And this year was no different. One of the larger booths on the floor was that of iniBuilds, and although scaled down from the developer’s original vision, the booth’s main point of interest was the Synaptic A220. The Synaptic team were out last weekend with 2 PCs demoing their long-awaited regional jet for MSFS, with this show being the first time members of the public have gotten a chance to try it.

I was lucky enough to bag myself half an hour with the aircraft, alongside Harsh from the Synaptic Simulations team, who gave me a comprehensive overview of the aircraft in its current state. TL;DR; What I saw gives me confidence that the team can pull this off, and the scale and ambition in the project is all there to see.

First Impressions

Harsh got me started off at JFK for a look at the aircraft on stand. This preview was running on MSFS 2020 and Harsh told me that it was an “early build” – although it still represented a significant step up on what we saw in the Synaptic Livestream a few weeks back. Unfortunately the monitor being used was only 1080p, so I wasn’t able to appreciate the full glory of the texture and modelling work on display, however from what I could see right off the bat, this is a gorgeous plane.

In particular, what stood out straight away were the immersive materials. The team have accurately textured and modelled a variety of these, from smooth metals to moulded plastics and fabric. In particular, the top of the glare shield is wrapped in a kind of premium matte leather that you might find in a fancy car’s upholstery. I don’t actually know that for certain, but the visual quality of this material in the sim was so good that I could imagine touching it and knowing exactly what it would feel like.

Right from the moment we turned on the aircraft’s two batteries I was learning new things about the systems of the 220. For example, did you know this plane has no IRS switches? As soon as the plane is receiving AC power, the IRS automatically begin the process of aligning without any user input. Speaking of AC power, the second we turned on the battery I immediately noticed a very loud hum. This, said Harsh, is from the battery fans. It’s not really comparable to another aircraft I’ve flown before, sounding less like having an air vent pointed at your face and more like standing in a one of those dimly lit server rooms. You can expect the sort of loud but low pitch hum you get from standing beside several racks full of computers on this flight deck.

Sounds on this aircraft have all been produced in partnership with Echo 19, who have become something of a name themselves in the industry – and on this product, that shows.

Systems Depth

Next it was time to power up the APU. Harsh showed me the electrical page, which is all fully modelled, and how the APU connects to the bus once it’s up and running as part of the full electrical simulation present on the aircraft already in this current build.

We also got a look at the checklists which are integrated into the aircraft’s cockpit screens. If you’re familiar with the integrated checklists on the 777 and 787 aircraft, then you’ll find the A220’s checklists function in very much the same way. Items that the aircraft can sense or detect have already been completed are cleared automatically for you, leaving the only toggles the user actually has to deal with as things like seat adjustments and confirming the presence of the onboard library.

Harsh also told me that these checklists will be customisable according to the airline being flown. For example, he said, within the group of A220 pilots checking and testing the aircraft as it’s developed, there are at least two companies that have differing SOP (standard operating procedure) in particular phases of a typical air mission, and these differences are reflected in the items on the checklist and their order within it. These will be configured according to documentation the team can get their hands on, and I presume it will be livery-dependent as to which version you get.

Next it was time to input a flight plan. We did a very rudimentary setup taking me from JFK to Boston. The Synaptic team have integrated a custom scratchpad and font to match the real aircraft, but for users who find the in-sim keyboard too fiddly there is also the functionality to enter information directly from your desktop keyboard. A little circle appears under your mouse cursor when you hover over any given field on any of the displays, and this indicates you are able to type something in.

And as we prepared to push I also got a close look at the Navigraph OANS integrated onboard the aircraft. Although this system is now present on a number of other more modern, heavy airliners in the sim like the FBW A380 and iniBuilds A350, the Synaptic team were actually the first to get it working in one of their much earlier builds. The team have done some clever trickery in their code behind the scenes to ensure this feature doesn’t impact FPS. Harsh was giving me an explainer, and although I didn’t fully understand the tech if I’m being honest, it involves the team only using one image of that map and an FPS cap on that image to not hit performance in the aircraft at all.

Although the systems are looking really good, even in this early build, there are a few things I didn’t get to see or that were still work in progress. The performance calculator page, for example, is not ready yet. As I understand it, on the A220 these calculations are handled entirely by the aircraft without the need for an external EFB calculator.

Performance

Speaking of performance, how is this thing going to run on our home PCs?

It’s definitely too early to say with confidence, but right now I think the signs are there that this isn’t going to be a hugely VRAM hungry beast. The team had it running on a laptop with a 4070 GPU and a mid-range Ryzen processor, and although we were only running at 1080p, we were in high-ultra settings and achieving a consistent 50~ish FPS. This was also with TAA and no DLSS running. Harsh re-assured me that the build we were playing with had not received any optimisation for performance and that the process of refining this for release to the general public would begin in earnest later on in the development cycle.

That’s good for those of us who like to fly with high frames, but what about bugs and crashes? Well, Harsh told me that as of yet the team have never had a WASM crash or sim crash with the airplane, although of course this is a preview build and the notion that the A220 will never ever crash on your system should be taken with a hand full of salt.

Flight Model and Handling

Up until now, things had been going pretty well. I was impressed, until it came to hand-flying. Before I say anymore, I wasn’t un-impressed either. Basically, according to Harsh, the team hasn’t really done the flight model yet, and as such the handling is quite unnatural. I’m only really including my thoughts on it in this first look because I’m sure you want to know about it – but to be clear, I don’t expect any of what I’m about to write to be representative of the final product.

That disclaimer out of the way, upon getting airborne after rotation, one thing that I immediately noticed was that the pitch axis was very sluggish. I needed a lot of stick input to get the plane to nose up or down. A lot in contrast to the roll axis, which was the complete opposite. It really didn’t take much left or right stick to get the plane into a thirty degree bank for a steep turn.

I would have normally engaged the autopilot anyway, but for this FSExpo demonstration build, the autoflight systems have all been disabled. You could still click on the button for AP1, but nothing happened. Harsh did tell me during my time in the air that the team has a candidate build internally with these features enabled, but they weren’t ready for the show. That’s fine by me though – hand flying it is! And I thought I’d try to do a simple circuit with the aircraft until I encountered the other major issue with its (current) handling. As soon as the airspeed gets above about 180 kts, the plane starts to get into a sort of untameable phugoid cycle. I suppose there was a bit of Dutch Roll as well, although the roll axis didn’t seem to be nearly as affected as the pitch. Once you get into this cycle of unstoppable nose up/nose down motions, it is not possible to get it to stop. Even pulling the throttles back and getting the speed back down to around 160 kts with flaps didn’t seem to help much.

This might have just been down to my bad flying, but to be fair to myself (and to the credit of the Synaptic Team for admitting it), Harsh did say other visitors to the booth had experienced similar pitch oscillations over the weekend. The result was that my flight sadly ended up not safely back on the runway, but in a field 2 miles from the threshold on nothing like the final approach course and 30 degrees nose down.

I’ll reiterate, though: this build was not and is not going to be representative of the final product. Harsh did mention to me that the team had received feedback from real A220 pilots on the flight controls, and all of them had said that the real plane rolls easily.

However, Harsh seemed to imply that the team were looking to strike a balance between what might be considered “ultra realistic” by a line-trained captain on the type, and something which any of us nerds can pick up and have a rough idea of how to fly. Some die-hard simmers might not like that stance, but I think it is entirely reasonable. It’s all well and good going for “study level” (dare we use those ominous words), but if the vast majority of people can’t get their head around the plane and its handling then it’s not going to be as popular or fun to operate unless we dedicate many hours to learning the ins and outs of the plane. 2 or 3 years ago I could have and probably would have done that, but now as a father and husband I’d never have the time to go through all the tutorials and training manuals.

To be clear; that doesn’t mean the team are seeking to “dumb down” the add-on either. Their aim is still very much at a high-fidelity, faithfully recreated digital replica of the aircraft – but also one without a massive barrier to entry in the form of pre-supposed knowledge.

Closing Thoughts

So, all in all, what was my impression of the A220? Right now, it is definitely NOT ready for prime time. However, the areas that were highlighted to me where the team are pleased with their work fills me with confidence about how this plane is progressing. An initial release is coming towards the tail end of this year, assuming the team can stay on schedule. And that being said, if the team needs to delay and adjust that previously announced schedule to get things just right, I’d much rather they did. I know the Synaptic guys will be reading this, and to them I say – you only get one first impression, and I really hope you make it count.

Choosing to develop a complex airliner like the A220 as a first project must be rather daunting, and as a community I believe most of us can sympathise with the time and effort that goes into making these products as good as they are. We’ve seen other developers release their first products in an incomplete or “early access” state before, and some of them are still struggling to pick up their standing within the community to this day. And this is not just within Flight Simulation, but the entire video gaming industry.

So, if the team can get the flight model nailed down, keep the performance on a mid-spec PC at about the level it is right now, and successfully integrate all of the auto flight features like auto throttle, autopilot, LNAV and VNAV, and stick to their schedule? Then yes, this is an aircraft I’ll definitely be considering as a little Christmas present to myself.

Thank you to Harsh and all of the Synaptic Simulations team for allowing me to sit and check out your plane! If you want to look at our other content from the FSExpo weekend, use the FlightSimExpo 2025 tag to navigate to that area.