Fenix Simulations’ leader, Aamir, published a long GTA VI-themed video, showcasing the new update for their Fenix Simulations A320 aircraft series in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, breaking a major radio silence that lasted for almost a year.
The YouTube Video is almost two hours long and showcases all the stuff the team has been working on for the past months. Naturally, a major overhaul was made to the flight model, ECAM system, the FADEC and the lateral and vertical navigation logic, largely replacing the old code and making the A320 series ready for the upcoming NEO expansion.
The whole flight model change is accompanied by improvements to the already mentioned autopilot lateral and vertical navigation modes, the fly-by-wire system and the flight director. The flight model improvements are related to the inertia entries, making the aircraft more accurate in response to its mass. This change is also coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, as the changes were backported to that simulator as well.
The Fly-By-Wire was adjusted as well to better reflect the aircraft’s feedback to the controls. Speaking of the controls, the ground model has some changes included, too, making the aircraft behave more realistically during taxiing and mitigating simulator bugs in the ground handling characteristics. The flight director was replaced completely.
Aamir mentions that a lot of improved artwork features from the NEO were retrofitted to the CEO variant of the aircraft. There are many subtle model and texture changes, as well as animation improvements. Speaking of animations, there is a new physics-based animation system simulating vibrations on board the aircraft, which you can see in the video during the landing phase, as the EFB and panels vibrate around their pivot points. The cabin got some love, too, with the portholes being overhauled a little bit and now including the rounded reflection at their edges.
Moving over to the sound aspect of the aircraft, the plane includes a reworked soundpack, which now reflects the spatial situation of the camera much better. The sound can now be obstructed by nearby objects, or reflected off of surfaces. An active noise-cancelling system is going to be included in this upcoming version, and you can enable it by clicking the headphones found in the headphone compartment above your head. Aamir mentions that most of the sound work is being done on the NEOs at this moment, but, as with the artwork side of things, many sound improvements made it to the CEO version of the aircraft.
The Fenix Simulations A320 series’ EFB got some large changes for present features and future improvements. The settings app is completely rebuilt, making it much easier to navigate through the number of settings that were added. You can also use the search option to find what you are looking for. A new app, called Documents, includes checklists, QRH and other documents that you would find helpful in the A320 series. The entries in the app are clickable, making your cockpit flow more seamless. You can also add your own entries, depending on the SOPs of your desired airline operator.
As Fenix Simulations aims to bring the most detailed A320 simulation to Microsoft Flight Simulator to date, they are also working on non-piloting aspects of the aircraft, including the Flight Attendant Panel, Cabin Intercommunication Data System, and related circuit breakers. This was also built to be as close to 1:1 as possible compared to the real aircraft. These systems are power-sourced and support failures and abnormal operations.
The ECAM system is completely replaced in the new version of the Fenix A320 family. Everything has been improved. The version of the ECAM remains the same, but the backbone of the whole system is overhauled, bringing major changes to support future development of the aircraft family. The new ECAM is also going to support the upcoming Minimum Equipment List system and other things that are confidential as of the writing of this article.
Lastly, the FADEC logic is going to be a little bit different in the coming update as well, and the different behaviours of both the CFM 56 and IAE V2500 variants are going to be reflected in the startup sequence, for example, when you pull out the FADEC circuit breaker. Whilst the CFM 56 starts, the IAE may not. There are more in-depth differences, described in detail in the full video.
In the comment section, the Fenix Simulations team mentioned that this whole Version 3 update is going to be completely free of charge for all current Fenix Simulations A320 series users, and is going to be released next week. Unfortunately, a major question mark remains floating above the release and more information about their NEOs. However, virtual pilots are going to have a lot of fun with this new update. If you are more interested in a more detailed description of the whole Version 3 update, we highly recommend watching through the whole showcase.
You can also read more about Fenix Simulations and their recent aircraft update, which already teased some large changes that are already upon us.
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