FF announces Study Level A320 for XP

Jesco Freund

Jesco Freund

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Today 12:21 PM
Roman from Flight Factor has announced they are working on a study level A320 for X-Plane, porting a fully certified training sim into XP.

Full announcement post: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/121624-a320-ultimate-from-flightfactor/
Video Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI1pH40NYC8

Whew, finally looks as if we X-Planers can draw level with FSLabs :wink:
 
Hehe, it's coming early next week (mind, as a public beta for now). FF will only open to pilots already owning 3 or more of their airliners (so I'm among the lucky ones that can race to get their copy :wink:).

Full announcement from Roman can be found here: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/121624-a320-ultimate-from-flightfactor/&do=findComment&comment=1262472
 
And off we go - 23 hours to go... (cf. https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/121624-a320-ultimate-from-flightfactor/&do=findComment&comment=1264316)
 
Got one copy for me. Eventuelly I will start making an ACH livery over the long week-end - given FF is providing me with a paint kit.

Current status: the aircraft itself is already marvellous, never seen a 'bus model like it (also in terms of system depth), and despite it's officially still in beta, it runs quite stably. Only quirk: XACARS does not recognize engine shutdown, so it never terminates the flight and generates a PIREP - manual intervention also kills the flight data.
 
Coming back on the XACARS issue, some investigation has been made, and we know what's happening. XACARS uses the N1 data refs in X-Plane to check whether engines are running or not. The developers of the A320 ultimate take the position that N1 is a very poor data ref for determining whether an engine is running or not (e. g. due to wind milling), and therefore does not maintain this data ref (the A320 has a data model outside of XP standards, and only what developers write actively back into the XP data refs is accessible for third-party plugins). They recommend that XACARS should change it's detection behaviour to a combination of N2 and an on ground detection (e. g. landing gear down, wheels not spinning, parking brake set) - so your flight recording doesn't stop when you're suddenly in a Gimli Glider situation.

Someone at the .org was to contact Marko to discuss the situation with him (I guess the A320U could in general be of great interest for virtual airlines, as it's a most impressive A320 representation, on level with the FSL one, and in some aspects even more advanced). So let's see and wait what the discussion with Marko will bring.

Other options we might have: The A320U has an extensive API and provides an SDK, so probably I can implement an ACARS system within their EFB (it's a JavaScript application, where they have exposed all internal data refs and some XP data refs to JavaScript, and the EFB itself is a chromium engine, displaying HTML+CSS). That would bring us to a situation where XACARS can still be used for any other XP aircraft, and the A320 would have its own ACARS.
 
I saw Q8's first impressions video of that aircraft. My god what an addon...
Are there any known plans from FF for an A330 project? Although I think the A320 as an addon is simply incredible, still I am not such an A320 lover...

let's hope.
Thibault
 
No, AFAIK there are no plans for an A330 right now. On the "Ultimate" product line, FF will have to finish the A320, and although the beta is more than impressive, I guess it will take them up to one year before they have achieved full maturity and feature completeness. If at all, my guess would then be for an A320 derivate, either the A321, or something about engine options (the A320U runs exclusively with the CFM-56).

On their "Pro" product line, I guess FF has to do something about their A350 (customers being quite annoyed meanwhile as the promised upgrade from Advanced to Pro never came - and now QPAC officially announced the end of their engagement in X-Plane development). And somebody let slip they're working on a new Boing. As they cover already the B757, B767 and B777, speculations are either a refurbished B777, or with some luck & hope a B744 (the only model without any decent coverage on XP, given the default one is quite a poor representation, and PMDG having just clarified they won't port their Queen II to XP). The 737 is fairly well covered, with IXEG taking care of the classic, and EADT offering a marvelous freeware NG family (at least the 737-800 and 737-700). Theoretically, there would be room for a MAX, but availability of performance data for this aircraft is even thinner than for A320 NEOs, so I guess it will take some time before we see one of them simulated properly.
 
Me again, and again about (X)ACARS. In fact my posting above is incorrect as XACARS actually uses the sim/flightmodel/engine/ENGN_FF data ref, and not N1. As this seems to be a correct and good way to detect whether engines are running or not, I have asked the A320 developers to maintain this data ref.

Meanwhile, there's a workaround for those impatiently waiting to run the A320 beta with Air-Child.
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, a fellow beta tester over at the .org has created a
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script, setting the fuel flow data ref by monitoring the N2 data ref (which again is maintained by the A320 plugins):
Code: 
engine_ff = dataref_table("sim/flightmodel/engine/ENGN_FF_")
engine_n2 = dataref_table("sim/flightmodel/engine/ENGN_N2_")

function check_engines_running()
  if engine_n2[0] > 0.0
  then
    engine_ff[0] = 1.0
  else
    engine_ff[0] = 0.0
  end
	
  if engine_n2[1] > 0.0
  then
    engine_ff[1] = 1.0
  else
    engine_ff[1] = 0.0
  end
end

if AIRCRAFT_FILENAME == "A320.acf" then
  do_sometimes("check_engines_running()")
end

This workaround script allows using XACARS with the A320 ultimate beta. Hopefully in the future, we can dispense with this script, having decently maintained data refs for the A320...
 
Finally, some good news: Here is the first PIREP I managed to register without manually fiddling with data refs: http://www.air-child.com/pirepDetail.php?fid=01112017002248ACH15066476&pid=ACH1506

As a precaution, I used the script above, but FF developers also agreed to include the data refs required by XACARS into the next build.
 
And here is the first PIREP that worked completely without any Lua work around scripting, just using XACARS and the latest build (1707) of the A320 beta:

http://www.air-child.com/pirepDetail.php?fid=04112017125016ACH15067219&pid=ACH1506

OK, for that, technical integration is done. Now the next step will be to paint a livery. Any volunteers?
 
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