The first modern long-haulier by Aerosoft entered the beta stage. Mathijs Kok has recently taken to the Aerosoft Forums to announce that the Aerosoft A330 for Microsoft Flight Simulator entered beta and shared a big development update alongside this information.
First A330 Beta Previews
Firstly, Mathijs has shared in the forum post a few images taken by the beta testers. For now, we are only seeing the external model of the aircraft, as the cockpit is still under development, namely under NDA. This means that the beta testers can’t yet share the details of the cockpit.
In the five different images, Mathijs shared we can see the Airbus A330 exterior under various conditions. The details, such as the front and back of an engine, the front profile of the aircraft and the landing gear are shown.
Developer Update Telling Us A Lot
Even though the project officially entered the beta stage, there are still some parts of the aircraft that are under deep development, according to the project manager Mathijs Kok. He mentioned that the modelling, texturing and almost all of the animations are now solid. With that, Mathijs mentioned that “Stefan and Anne are already working on the next bus.” This information confirms the existence of another Airbus aircraft in development for the Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Speaking of flight modelling, engine modelling and FADEC, there were massive issues with the development. The development team aims to get within 3% of correct behaviour. This possibly means that every airframe has a different behaviour, thus it’s quite difficult to get real engine performance data.
Autopilot and the systems are rather finished at this point. According to Mathijs these two things still need a bit of polishing, however, the aeroplane already follows the vertical and horizontal navigation properly. Mathijs also mentioned how really complex this aircraft is, which many of us virtual pilots will not ever see. He gave us an example of cabin heat. The system of the aircraft automatically recognizes cabin temperature and adjusts airflow accordingly. This is one of many details Aerosoft gave effort into. Mathijs mentioned that the Aerosoft development team is very proud of the EFB they have worked on for this release. While it still needs a bit of tweaking, Navigraph, NavDataPro and Simbrief integrations, together with accurate weather information and runway data are all present at this point.
Lastly, Mathijs spoke about installer protection, support and how they are going to work around the Marketplace release of this rendition.
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