The Aerosoft Airbus A330 has been an anticipated product for Microsoft Flight Simulator for a long time now. After countless development updates and many delays, the latest long hauler for the platform is now in our hands. While the long-haul market used to be underserved in MSFS, the Aerosoft Airbus A330 comes into a market that now has several high-quality options.
Aerosoft was kind enough to send me a pre-release review copy to test out and put the aircraft through its paces. While I haven’t had much time to dive in, this first impressions review will walk you through various aspects of the aircraft and how it holds up in my opinion. A full review will be released in the coming weeks and will see us dive in-depth into every aspect of the aircraft. As always, any opinions in this article are mine and are not influenced by Aerosoft or any other third party.
Installing the Aerosoft Airbus A330
The installation was pretty straightforward. The activation code I received was to be entered into Aerosoft’s installer, “Aerosoft One” after which the program did everything for me. It downloaded the files into a folder of my choice and was quickly installed into the sim. Both operations took approximately 40 minutes to complete. For reference, the files downloaded are almost two gigabytes, and the installed on-disk size is closer to four.
This pre-review “experimental branch” is pretty barebones in terms of what you get to see in the installer itself. There are only three options: know more about the product which will take you to the product (at the time not available since it had not been released yet), a “Get Support” option that gives you further options to raise a ticket, go through the forums, and access the user manuals, and a uninstall option should you wish to do so.
The option to install or uninstall liveries is not available however, upon loading into the sim, there are a multitude of liveries already pre-loaded with the aircraft. These include Asiana Airlines, American Airlines, Air Berlin, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and more. Upon release, more liveries should be available or there will be a multitude of them available on Flightsim.to.
As of now, only the Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine variant (which is the base pack) is available. The other variants, namely the Rolls-Royce Trent 700, General Electric CF6, and NEO engines will be available soon after release for a small additional cost. The price tag of the base pack is EUR 30 inclusive of any taxes.
Interior
Cockpit
Since the cockpit is the first thing you see when you spawn into the aircraft, that is where we will start. On first viewing the cockpit looks satisfactory. There is a good level of texturing for the panels, the displays appear crisp, and the modeling is pretty accurate to the real-world thing. The EFB is present too, and so are other cool stuff to have like openable windows, visors to block the sun, foldable tray tables, and more.
It is upon closer inspection, however, that things start to completely crumble. The textures are low resolution and the modeling on curved surfaces is jagged suggesting a low polygon count. The displays’ resolution falls apart completely upon zooming in, and the throttles look sanded down yet a little shiny at the same time. It is too clean.
Furthermore, the floodlighting inside the cockpit is also very dim. Turning on the DOME lights to the highest intensity makes little difference when viewing the overhead panel. The parts of the cockpit directly under the lights are still okay though which leads me to believe the volumetric aspect of the light wasn’t done well. The shadows under the sun too are low quality and are not done well.
The knobs too have a low polygon count and have the same jagged look the rest of the cockpit does.
Cabin
In terms of cabin, there is no cabin. I mean there is, but it is so poorly done that it seems it was added at the last possible moment. It received no effort whatsoever and even flying in broad daylight, the cabin looked very dark. There is honestly nothing more I can say regarding the cabin interior of the Airbus A330 that Aerosoft has given us.
Exterior Model
The exterior has been modeled to a satisfactory level. The beauty of the real-world Airbus A330 has been captured well here. The thin, slender wings, tilted four-wheel bogey, the few passenger windows that slant upwards at the end, and the instantly recognizable “Airbus nose” have all been modeled well and accurately reflect the real-world aircraft.
But again, just like the cockpit, it is after closer inspection that things start to fall apart. The modeling on all curved surfaces such as the doors, the leading edge slats, tires, wings, and more, again suggests a low polygon count on the models. There are too many jagged lines to ignore as a one-off occurrence. Whether or not this was done for performance optimizations is unknown. However, in this article, I do talk about the performance, so you can scroll down to make up your mind about that.
Texturing is again subpar and looks like they have been half-heartedly baked onto aircraft models. It is really low resolution. Some of the decals are quite good when zoomed in but the PBR textures are non-existent, dirt and grime marks are too “light”, and the plane overall feels too smooth and shiny. Some aspects have been done well however like the nose area of the plane near the cockpit windows, the tail cone section, the doors, and the wing tips.
Sounds
The soundscape of an aircraft is also an essential aspect of the immersion such a product offers. The sounds on offer on the Aerosoft Airbus A330 for MSFS leave more to be desired. A lot of the accuracy has been represented well from startup to shut down but many aspects are quite annoying and disrupt that immersion.
For example, when first starting the plane from COLD & DARK, the sounds of the aircraft coming to life are excellent. Cabin fans have to be manually turned on and once you do so, the cockpit feels quite nice and real-world-like with the ambient background noise as you configure the MCDU. Turning on the APU and hearing the air conditioning come alive is also done well.
It is after turning on the engines that some odd stuff can be discovered. The startup sounds of the PW4000s are lovely both from the cockpit and the outside view. However, once either engine spools to idle at N1 RPM, the sounds are suddenly muted to a substantial degree. They are just not loud in the outside view, and in the cockpit, the sounds are muffled with the fans and air conditioning active. When you start the other engine it is also loud and sounds like music to my ears but upon achieving idle N1 RPM, the sounds die down again.
Even at takeoff and full TOGA RPM, the engines do not have the roar and loudness that you would expect from an airplane engine. In the outside view, it sounds like a car engine and in the cockpit, the engine sounds are reduced to the background as the other sounds of the flight deck take precedence such as the fans and the AC.
Clicking buttons, knobs, and switches also have their associated sounds with them and are satisfying. But these also sometimes just don’t “appear” when clicked in quick succession or just randomly don’t show up. Another weird glitch I found during my testing is that if you try to open the cockpit window doors in-flight, they of course don’t do so but the sounds associated with opening them do end up playing which makes for a hilarious little bug.
Systems, Flight Model, and the EFB
MCDU
The Aerosoft Airbus A330 does most of the basic stuff well. Inputting your flight plan into the MCDU is quite straightforward, and so are the other aspects of programming the box such as PERF, RAD NAV, INIT A & B pages, and selecting your desired SIDs and STARs. But that is where the good stuff ends.
Some approaches require manual vectoring into the final approach when transitioning from a STAR. That shows up on the MCDU with an “F-PLN DISCONTINUITY” warning but is not preceded by “MANUAL” on the F-PLN page. But on the Navigation Display or ND, there appears to be no such discontinuity and the autopilot will fly the approach as if the STAR and APP were connected even though it shows DISCONTINUITY on the MCDU. This is inaccurate behavior. TERR radar on ND is also INOP.
SEC PLN page does not work, the WINDS page is not implemented, certain values such as fuel to be used for ALTN to be entered are not allowed, the PROG page has some functionality missing, and the entire ATSU page for WX info (as an example) is also missing. Furthermore, the aircraft automatically connects and flies a manual vector when transitioning from STAR to APP. Even when the MCDU box shows “F-PLN DISCONTINUITY” it will continue flying as if it didn’t exist. SimBrief F-PLAN import also does not work.
The MCDU PERF page switches to DES mode as soon as I dial down the altitude knob to a certain level even though my aircraft is still in the cruise level. It should stay on the CRZ page until it starts descending. This is again incorrect behavior. HOLD functionality is not implemented meaning you cannot fly into busy airspaces on VATSIM.
LNAV/VNAV have serious issues. LNAV almost always overshoots its turns and will go around in a loop if the WPTs are too closing requiring intervention and manual vectoring to the next logical WPT. The aircraft just doesn’t know when to turn until it has PASSED a WPT. It doesn’t know to factor in speed, altitude, and distance from the WPT to turn in time to do a fly-by WPT turn.
VNAV too does not comply with ALT restrictions during both a descent and a climb. Its calculated TOD and TOC are not accurate. When engaging “managed DES” mode before TOD results in a descent of minus 300-500fpm. It is only when triggering the DES at almost exactly the point of TOD that the aircraft descends at a reasonable rate. Even then I have to intervene to keep it on profile and not miss the ILS capture. APPR mode also does not engage automatically, it has to be manually engaged through the MCDU.
Flight model
I also want to briefly touch up on the flight model of this MSFS aircraft. And I must say it seems to be quite well done to me. I am not a real-world pilot nor am I type-rated on the Airbus A330, but from my short testing time on this aircraft, the flight model is good. Turns feel heavy, and it takes a lot of thrust and pitch to get this off the ground. It behaves the same way you would expect a heavy airliner like the A330 to behave.
The real-world Airbus A330 features fly-by-wire controls like many in the Airbus family aircraft and Aerosoft has replicated that to quite a satisfactory level here. The bank angle is maintained by the airplane during turns, and so is the pitch/angle of attack of the aircraft. I tried stalling the aircraft, and once reaching a critical speed and AOA, the systems took control. It pitched the plane down lowering its AOA and pushed the throttles to full TOGA, effectively pulling out of a stall. This is all of course during manual flight.
The aircraft does have issues maintaining pitch and correct speeds. During a managed DES or an ILS APP, the plane descends too fast to get on profile while the engines go down to idle. It then climbs up to counteract the descent to again get back on profile and spools up the engine gaining too much speed and altitude before idling off the engines again and descending. This cycle gets worse every time and I have to fly using VS mode.
EFB
The EFB is pretty barebones in the Aerosoft Airbus A330. It has all of the basic functionalities you would expect from an EFB in MSFS. You can load in your OFP from SimBrief, there is a moving map you can pan around and zoom in and out, you can set your passengers, cargo, and fuel according to OFP FPLN values, and you can call in ground service vehicles such as GPU, catering, jetway, etc. and toggle the chocks and cones. You can also load the state you want the aircraft to be in and this includes the COLD & DARK, [GATE] Turnaround, ready-to-taxi state, and runway take-off state.
Also note that the aircraft does not load into COLD & DARK state by default but the plane itself will judge where you are in the airport and load in an appropriate state automatically. The option to set COLD & DARK as default spawn-in state is not available. There is one neat little feature in the pushback section of the tablet. You can draw and select a manual route the pushback tug takes so you won’t have to do so manually while starting up your engines. You can’t however “pull” the aircraft. It will automatically push you back on the pre-selected route and once done will set the parking brake for you.
Performance and Stability
The performance of this aircraft is very good. It is comparable to PMDG aircraft like the 777 and 737 and a little bit better than the A320neo V2. iniBuilds’ A320neo always struggled a little on my systems for reasons unknown. My PC of choice is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, an NVIDIA 2060 Super GPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB M.2 SSD, and 650W PSU from CoolerMaster which allows me to comfortably get 25-40FPS at a 1440p resolution. Most settings are at HIGH while some are MEDIUM and ULTRA.
It is safe to say that performance and frame rates will not be an issue on the Aerosoft Airbus A330. It is quite smooth. Stability, however, is quite an issue. In the couple of flights, I was able to squeeze in during my limited testing, three of my approaches were plagued by stuttering and freezes during my final approach to an airport. And that was quite annoying since it ruined my chance at a butter landing.
Twice it so happened that while trying to load into the COLD & DARK state to start flying, the airplane froze my simulator completely to the point I had to restart my system. Loading into any state of flight through the EFB can cause some stutters too and a temporary freeze. It did return to normal much to my relief and I could continue with my flight.
Other Issues
There are many other QOL issues in the aircraft. The window blinds do work but once pulled cannot be pushed back up because I cannot locate the click spot to do so. It was only by chance during a turn that my mouse caught it while hovering around that I was finally able to return it to its original position.
The click spots for knobs and switches are also wrong. Knobs should display a circular pointer that indicates the direction in which they turn upon clicking. That arrow is correct; however, when clicked it turns to the opposite direction. Switches also behave the same way and instead of having directional arrows to indicate the direction of travel, it has circular arrows just like the ones on the knobs.
There are also a couple of INOP switches and buttons in the cockpit that are very much required for A to B flying. Cabin check call buttons are INOP, so is the red autopilot disc button on the side stick, as well as the auto/thr button on the throttles themselves.
The throttles have a very weird bug where throttling up or down does not move the throttle in the cockpit. When I throttle up, I can hear the engines spool up and the ENG display values increase for N1, Fuel Flow, etc. but the throttles themselves do not move. Therefore I have no way of knowing whether I have selected the correct setting for TOGA, FLX MCT, or CLB. I have to use the mouse to move them in the cockpit.
The rudder and tiller are severely broken. I cannot steer the plane on the ground because every time I try to turn, the wheel snaps back to neutral after a second or so. It then deflects in the direction I was turning for an instant but then it again snaps back to neutral. This continues to happen as long as I still have the rudder/tiller engaged in a certain direction.
This makes it impossible to taxi. Therefore, I have to use slew mode just so I can “taxi” to the gate and line up with the runway. Furthermore, when using slew mode the engines are cut off automatically without touching anything if they are turned on in the first place. So sitting on the runway I have to go through the engine start-up process again.
The rudder does not function at all on the ground so I cannot do a complete flight surface check after the engine starts. Once in the air though, it is plagued by the same issues the nose gear is. Thankfully, not much of the rudder is used during manual flight so it did not bother me much.
Conclusion
Aerosoft has also released an online manual on how to fly their Airbus A330 but unfortunately did not help me mitigate any of the issues I encountered. While I hope that it’s only a matter of time before this aircraft’s true potential is reached, at this point, I cannot honestly say I had fun flying this jet. Many nice things are going on with this aircraft such as the flight model, some aspects of the modeling and the soundscape, and the EFB but the more negative aspects of the aircraft overshadow the positive.
The Aerosoft Airbus A330 is currently available to purchase on the Aerosoft Store. The base pack which as of now only includes the PW4000 variant retails for EUR30 inclusive of taxes. Hopefully, Aerosoft can quickly update the Airbus A330 to fix some of the most glaring issues. I will of course be taking an in-depth look at it in the coming days so make sure to stay tuned for that.
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