After a few months of no news from the Fenix Simulations team, a brand new update was released to the public that improved on the already impressive A320. The new update, version 1.0.3.125, is the result of months of hard work to improve many parts of the short-haul narrow body Airbus aircraft.

In the Discord post by the team, the new update improves various aspects of the simulation. Large ticket items such as VNAV and flight modelling have been addressed along with smaller things such bug squashing issues with the livery manager.

One area highlighted that was fixed with this update was the drag effect flaps had on the aircraft. In addition, rotation behaviour has also been addressed with version 1.0.3.125 of the Fenix Simulations A320. The changes to the flight model have been tested by various team members and pilots, followed then by being cross-checked in a Level-D simulator. Aamir says, “Rotation and post rotation has been reworked to allow for a smoother, more consistent behaviour. This involved changing the way the physical elevator on the aircraft worked, along with system-side tweaks to improve what the software was doing with the elevator. We’ve modelled this after some great data from our tech team, and cross-checked it thereafter with a couple of the type-rated members in the team – the aircraft will drop it’s nose during the blending phase, but no longer anywhere near as aggressively as it did before. This behaviour was then validated in the level-D simulator.”

Other areas of improvement come from the graphic and sound departments. The engine sounds have been completely reworked and artwork throughout has seen changes to improve the general look and feel of the plane. In addition, VR users have been heard and the EFB now scales for those users, whilst other elements of the plane have been improved to accommodate various headsets.

Systems also saw improvements too, with things such as VNAV having an extensive amount of work. Aamir says, “VNAV was re-math’d, this was a painful process taking weeks of work from our team. Most probably qualify for a phD in Math at this point. This was done in order to ensure we captured not just the functionality of the aircraft’s systems, but also their character – as the A320 tends to descend toward the upper end of the speed band, as opposed to constantly getting slow on speed and hugging the bottom bracket. It’s important to stress that VNAV in general (and in the real aircraft) is far from perfect – and speeds will absolutely vary, sometimes sitting at the bottom bracket, sometimes sitting at the top of the bracket, sometimes in between.”

VNAV will continue to be worked on in the future as the team continues to refine the aircraft.

The full changelog is down below. To update your copy, head over to the Fenix Simulations website and grab the latest build.

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