Welcome to the eighteenth installment of The Workshop – a series dedicated to the latest news and updates regarding FlyByWire’s work on the A32NX and the upcoming A380. Our previous episodes can be read here. The Workshop is written directly by the FlyByWire team within the FSNews and FlyByWire partnership.
Features of the Week
This week, some features have been merged into the latest development version of the aircraft.
- Integration of our entirely custom fly-by-wire, FADEC, autothrottle and autopilot systems from the experimental version into the development version. This includes the requirement to calibrate your throttle quadrant in the flyPad.
- Completely revamped flight model:
- Lift and drag adjustments to provide more accurate pitch angle, N1 values, climb, descent times and distances, and deceleration rates.
- Wing dihedral and sweep, horizontal tail size, and flight control surface deflections were corrected.
- Integration of the custom ELEC system into the base system
- Fixes to MCDU page formatting
Upcoming custom flight plan manager and custom LNAV
For the past few months, we have been working on a completely new flight planning system, based on code from Working Title Simulations, which solves a lot of common issues (going direct to the RWY fix on approach, not being able to edit waypoints which are part of a STAR…) and adds new functionality such as discontinuity. While the system is still in an early stage, we have a preview of what will soon come to our new experimental build:
While the representation on the ND is not entirely correct yet, this is a huge leap over the default interpretation by MSFS.
Work in Progress
- AoA (angle of attack) protection in normal law
- Realistic system simulations
- Current work focusing on a from-scratch hydraulics system
- Additional EFB features
- Redesign of global UI with a new sidebar layout and better readability
- Navigraph Charts integration
- More options in the Settings page, allowing tuning of various aircraft parameters
- Takeoff and landing performance calculator
- Avionics rewrite (PFD, ECAM, MCDU and FCU) – for performance improvements and easier code maintenance
Our next episode of The Workshop is scheduled to be published on 14th May.
