Hello all,

I am keen to give the whale a bit of a leg stretch one day.

Currently, I am running an older system (6700K/1080/4K monitor) with P3D and the trusty PMDG 744/777/FSLA320.  I am holding off upgrading my PC so as I don't upgrade "too early" and essentially have a new PC whose capabiltities I'm not actually using.

Is the FBW A380 in a decent state for long-haul flying these days?  I appreciate systems depth etc. (to a certain level - I don't often trigger multitudes of failures, but like to practise an EFATO or something like that every now and again).  I am happy with the PMDG 747 and its features like auto step climb, the ability to save and reload a flight if the PC crashes or I have to leave the house for a while etc.

I see the FBW A380 does not support save/reload - so is there any workaround to this?  What are your thoughts generally on it?  Any glaring issues?

If I do upgrade my PC - it would likey be to something like an AMD 5800X3D and a 5900XTX graphics card.  I run a 4K monitor, and generally use Vsync @ 30Hz so far for my flight simulation.  Would such a combination support 30 FPS with the FBW A380/other payware addons into addon airports like LHR etc with MSFS2024?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Kind regards,
Rudy

 

my advice

So i have a 9800x3d and a 5070ti.  I still struggle to use the fbw380 on ms2024  even with 4K textures you going to have issues unless you only fly it out of airports that are small and dont use much vram.  I tried it out of KLAX last week, it crawled and stuttered to the runway the vram was huge and it ctd'd after 2 hours in flight.

So firstly id wait until ms2024 su4 comes out, and then id wait until the inibuilds 380 comes out, and then id wait some more to see if ithey release it in a fit state, remembering what the 350 was like on release.

Ill hazzard a guess that inibuilds will hype that 380 (like they did with the 350) to high heaven to get the sales.  Just wait it out.  Save onto your money for the moment.

 

  

Edited November 17, 2025Nov 17 by fluffyflops

Still not usable for me for performance reasons, unfortunately. It's looking mighty fine but my PC can't cope with it.

Thank-you gentlemen for your advice.

Not sure about Pete, but Nils, your system is no slouch - and if your PC isn't coping well with it, then it must need a bit serious optimisation!

17 minutes ago, VHOJT said:

Thank-you gentlemen for your advice.

Not sure about Pete, but Nils, your system is no slouch - and if your PC isn't coping well with it, then it must need a bit serious optimisation!

like I said I cant run it with a high end system, neither can any of my mates. wait it out, keep your money in your pocket 

9 minutes ago, fluffyflops said:

like I said I cant run it with a high end system, neither can any of my mates. wait it out, keep your money in your pocket 

Apologies, Pete! You did indeed give your specs - should have replied before I had the glass of wine! Thanks for the advice and your experiences with it. 

3 minutes ago, VHOJT said:

Apologies, Pete! You did indeed give your specs - should have replied before I had the glass of wine! Thanks for the advice and your experiences with it. 

no worries mate, im just being honest with you. 

most importantly wait until su4 comes out before you give ms your money, and wait until a polished release of the ini 380 comes before you give them some more of your money

Unpopular opinion - don‘t, wait for the ini A380. Even with 24GB of VRAM it will run out of VRAM if you use the OANS. It hasn‘t had any significant performance improvements in a year and I wouldn‘t expect any either. 
Systems wise it‘s okay, but still lacking a lot of important stuff. Compare that to the iniA350 which shares the same systems mostly and you‘ll see that even iniBuilds - not known for study level aircraft depth - is way ahead in functionality.

It‘s still great that what the FBW guys have done, and easily the best freeware aircraft for MSFS, don‘t get me wrong. But in terms of the pure experience it‘s not up there with my other airliners.

There is a way to disable the PAX cabin and free up some memory. One of the stickers above the jump seat is a click spot.

Knowing iniBuilds, I don't expect their A380 to be much better in FPS than the FBW one. And I'm not sure about the "much" part. I hope to be wrong 🙏

Edited November 17, 2025Nov 17 by Luis Hernandez

1 hour ago, Tuskin38 said:

There is a way to disable the PAX cabin and free up some memory. One of the stickers above the jump seat is a click spot.

like mr @Fiorentoni said above, it runs out of ram, and thats with the 4k textures and the cabin removed.  

then you put it in a big airport like KLAX , EGLL etc etc and your done.

for me in ms2020 i could just about run it, but with ms2024, its a no go for me, and ive got 16 gib vram on my 5070 ti 

its a shame because id love a good 380.  they have done great work with the fbw, but at least they are honest and said its unoptimised, which it is.

 

Edited November 17, 2025Nov 17 by fluffyflops

48 minutes ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Knowing iniBuilds, I don't expect their A380 to be much better in FPS than the FBW one. And I'm not sure about the "much" part. I hope to be wrong 🙏

I just hope they don't do what they did with the 350,  hype it way to early (for the kids at Christmas ) and release it way to early and then have to  patch it 14 time's.

 

 

13 minutes ago, fluffyflops said:

I just hope they don't do what they did with the 350,  hype it way to early (for the kids at Christmas ) and release it way to early and then have to  patch it 14 time's.

Well they didn't do any of that with the A340, and very likely won't with the A380. I'm sure they learned their lessons on releasing too early with the A350.
 

21 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Well they didn't do any of that with the A340, and very likely won't with the A380. I'm sure they learned their lessons on releasing too early with the A350.
 

lets hope so

We must remember that FBW A380 is a freeware project, comparing it to something like inbuilds makes no sense which is payware. Also when FBW released their A380 - they mentioned it upfront that their A380 is not optimised and as it stands it is currently in sort of post alpha stage. 

I got this from their website - "As a baseline please expect to see a framerate reduction of up to -25% compared to the default A32NX. We are working on improving this in the future as the A380X is in an alpha state and certain aspects of the model or textures may not be fully optimised for performance"

Edited November 17, 2025Nov 17 by CAP1234