Hi there!

I made it into the third (and most probably last) beta patch of one of the most anticipated airliners for X-Plane: The Flightfactor A320 Ultimate. Yes, I had them all: Starting from the PSS Busses in FS9, the Airsimmer, the Wilco/feelthere (later with the Marciano panel update, then the Evolution), the Airbus (X) by Aerosoft, the BBS Bus and the fantastic FS Labs A320 in FSX (and later in P3D), and the Peter Hager A320 family, the QPAC and its v2, the JAR Design in X-Plane 9,10 and 11! ;-) I´ve also been on two simulator sessions in A320 full flight sims at the Lufthansa flight training center in Frankfurt. You get the idea, I´m a bit of a nerd... ;-) 

XP is my favorite sim, and the A320 is the most flown airliner across Europe, so this addon was a MUST HAVE for me. I´ve watched countless live streams and YouTube videos, I´ve complained about fonts on the A320U forum at the org, I watched countless cockpit video DVDs, so I was really looking forward to taking this thing for a first spin!!! ;-)

Finally, I´ve done it! The maiden flight took place, 1hr ago! I flew her from Aerosoft´s EDDS over ortho photo scenery, all the way up to JustSim´s EDDH. I´ve pressed every switch (and there are many), 85% of them worked (wx radar is inop at the moment, things like the Cargo Smoke panel as well), turned off some systems during flight, turned them on again, watched the ECAM closely, I took her up tp FL370 to test the protections, and my (1st) verdict is pretty simple: WOW!

We´ve never been that close to a real Airbus in XP! That´s for sure! She´s pretty, not as super detailed as the Rotatesim MD80, not as beautifully textured as the FJS Twinjet v3. But she leaves no doubt, standing in front of her: She´s a real Airbus! Same thing is happenning when you enter the flight deck: My jaw might not have dropped like it did, when I saw the IXEG B733 for the first time. But I directly felt the anxiety and the anticipation I´ve felt, when I entered a real Airbus flight deck for the first time! Yeah, she´s a real Airbus.

Flicking the first switches, revealed another strength of this Addon, something that I consider to be very important: She sounds extremly well. Hearing the fans come to live, hearing the beeping of booting avionics really puts you there! She´s a real... you know! ;-)

And the positive immersion went on: The self test of the screens, the alignment process of the ADIRU´s, the ECAM and PFD showing the correct corresponding pages and announciations, according to the stage of flight preparation you do, all the way to T/O and after rotation. She taxis very nicely, brakes are effective, just a bit of throttling up, and she begins to move and keeps rolling... 

But we all know what makes an Airbus a real Airbus, beside the true to life colors of the screens, the correct fonts, the typical sounds and a fully fledged FMGC and MCDU: Yeah, the FBW! And boy, this is where she really shines. In XP, the QPAC (and Peter Hager´s busses) were quite good in that aspect, but their FMGC and auto flight systems were lacking very typical and important things. This beauty is COMPLETE: She feels extremly believable, you let go off the stick after rotation, and she keeps climbing in the same angle! You try to stall her, overspeed her, overbank her, all the protections kick in, just as you would expect. You turn off some systems (bleed air, a pack, an ELAC or FLAC, the A.-Skid), and you hear the bing, and the correct page of the ECAM pops up (all in 2D, if you wish so). The STS page provides you with additional information. I surely couldn´t do too much in depth testing during this 1h 10m flight, but what I´ve seen makes it pretty clear: She´s a... ;-)

Enough of writing! I will now show you some pics. The ones who are as "nerdy" as me, and are interested in the depth of systems, will see some interesting stuff on the panel shots. The EFB (or rather the two EFB´s) is a very nice tool as well. It helps you with the figures, lets you load and unload the plane, gives you a complete in sim web browser (!), and (when provided with an personal Google api code) shows your position on a zoomable Google Earth map!

One last important point: This thing is super detailed, and the programmed systems communicate internally via the ARINC protocol (as in the FS Labs Airbus, and just as in the real thing). My system is quite old, with an i5 3570k @ 4.3 GHz, 16 GB CL9 RAM, a GTX 1070 8GB, all on SSD. There´s no way around it, this addon is very demanding. My fps were 10-15 fps lower on this very cloudy flight than on IXEG, Rotatesim or JAR flights. Mid flight, I turned down the object density one notch, from high to medium, that brought back 2-5 fps. It never went below 21, but the highest figures in cruise never went above 32 (where I get 40-55 in the VCs of the other mentioned addons). All in all, it felt pretty smooth, only when changing views, a little stuttering occured. But remember, she´s still in beta, and, heck, YES, SHE`S A REAL AIRBUS (and I love her):

Thanks for viewing (and reading)! ;-)

Your very detailed writeup is much appreciated. Oh, ...and the pictures too!

John

40 minutes ago, John F said:

Your very detailed writeup is much appreciated. Oh, ...and the pictures too!

John

:-) 

She really impressed me on this first flight! 

The FF A320 looks excellent and a must purchase!

5 minutes ago, pugilist2 said:

The FF A320 looks excellent and a must purchase!

That is correct! ;-)

2 minutes ago, anthonyg96 said:

Wow u turned me on to buy it man lol

If you like XP, and you’re a bit into airliners, YOU MUST own this piece of software! :-)

Great review...Airbus 3000nm range and short field capability make it perfect for Europe!

HLJAMES

It would be interesting to hear your preliminary comparisons between the FF and FSLabs A320s. There was a series of videos made right after the first beta was released that showed that the FF was in many ways just as detailed as the FSL, but now that both have received updates in the past few months another comparison would be good to hear. 

I am not an airliner nerd, but I gotta admit this FF A320 is finally there for FF.  Thanks for the pics (but I gotta digest your other ones for Rotate MD-88 first )

Thanks a lot for reading and commenting, guys! I’ll have to do a few more tests and flights before I can say more. From my first impressions, I’m really impressed. And this FF A320 and the FSL Airbus go far beyond everything else that’s been released for a desktop flightsim so far! I’m so happy to see this finally happening in XP! Good times ahead! :-)

Really enjoyed the write up and pictures. Thanks for sharing!

Many thanks for sharing! Once again awesome shots and normally i´m not a huge airbus fan ;)

Thx for stoppin‘ by and commenting! :-) The A320 is my favorite short haul airliner for sure. But even if you’re not too much into Airbus, this release will be a true milestone in the history of XP!

10 minutes ago, Mik75 said:

Thx for stoppin‘ by and commenting! :-) The A320 is my favorite short haul airliner for sure.

Mine too ! Very interesting report !

Could have met in the Lufthansa training center in Frankfurt, I have also spend several hours there :)

Which leads me to a question : I have tried several Addon planes in XPlane and always find the elevator way too sensitive or twitchy. Only chance to influence this is the Joystick response curve, but that's not quite realistic. Currently only the IXEG 737 has survived on my disk, but I rarely use it. Well, because of the FSLabs A320 :).

If you compare FSLabs 320 vs. FF A320 vs. Lufthansa FFS, what's your impression regarding this ?

Mike

41 minutes ago, mikealpha said:

Mine too ! Very interesting report !

Could have met in the Lufthansa training center in Frankfurt, I have also spend several hours there :)

Which leads me to a question : I have tried several Addon planes in XPlane and always find the elevator way too sensitive or twitchy. Only chance to influence this is the Joystick response curve, but that's not quite realistic. Currently only the IXEG 737 has survived on my disk, but I rarely use it. Well, because of the FSLabs A320 :).

If you compare FSLabs 320 vs. FF A320 vs. Lufthansa FFS, what's your impression regarding this ?

Mike

Hi there! 

Glad, you like it! 

Not that easy to answer! First of all, it’s not unrealistic or unwanted to adjust your controller sensitivity in XP. With things like different controllers and personal taste, it’s even mandatory to adjust it. I use a X55 and I’ve set up quite a curve, to have finer control around the null zone on all axis. I’ve even set stability augmentation to 10% for elevator and aileron axis. That way, the controls feel very believable, in pretty much every addon I use. 

I already liked the QPAC FBW, but this is really something else. It’s absolutely comparable to what FSL have done with their masterpiece for FSX and P3D. Hand flying my first approach (actually that’s been the 2nd one) into windy Hamburg last night, was a pure joy and worked very precisely. 

The stick of the real Airbus (or better the full flight sim) feels way different. Certainly, not „toy“ish at all, and it really has quite a long way of movement. Let me put it that way (without wanting to sound too self-confident, and I was really surprised at myself ): Somehow, the experience I made in the desktop sims, all these countless hours, „flying“ so many different addons with controllers like the X52, the Proflight yoke and now the X55 by Saitek, enabled me, to do not too bad landings in the full flight sim at various airports, and even a hand flown circling approach onto LOWI‘s RWY08 worked pretty well! ;-) Without any pressure of real world flying and responsibility, but with added sensation of speed and real motion, I even found it to be a bit easier to land the full flight sim, compared to the software addons in FS9 and FSX back then. I was surprised, how agile and direct the „real deal“ felt, and I really have to say, that with all the beautiful graphics and sounds, those deep systems and flight models, both the FSL and the FF Airbus create a very realistic and immersive experience! Once released, this addon will be the state of the art (modern) airliner addon for XP!

Yeah, cool! Let’s meet there, I‘d love to have another session anytime soon. ;-)