Fenix A320: Destination Beta

Hello everyone!

It’s nice to be able to speak with you again, and I hope everyone has had a good start to the year. Over here at Fenix, the short period of silence over the holidays has truly allowed us to hammer down on the project and start pushing it forward with some pace. With that, we’re really pleased to announce that the Fenix A320 will finally enter Beta tomorrow.

Over the last 7 months, the aircraft has seen nearly daily use by our dedicated team of Alpha testers. These Alpha testers are not only valued team members, but also type-rated A320 pilots and technicians, working relentlessly to better the aircraft for you all. Some of you may occasionally have spotted one, two, or even flights of three “FNX” callsign aircraft on VATSIM, running cycles and putting the miles on. Then, late last year, we reworked our testing program, moving to a multi-stage Alpha system as the product was evolving at a fantastic rate, but one we felt was more appropriate for a mature Alpha as opposed to a Beta. Tomorrow, this finally changes, as we are now significantly closer to something that feels like an actual product – with updates and fixes being smaller and less impactful overall than the months prior. The scaffolding is slowly coming down, so to speak. So much so, in fact, that it is easy to forget just how much work remains in front of us. Several members of our team are now working 7 days a week to see this project through these latter stages of testing as swiftly as possible, and in conjunction with the relatively sizable Beta team we have assembled, please rest assured that we are working to get this airplane in your hands as soon as possible.

A small note on the Beta team – we’re really proud of the various different experience levels and backgrounds we have managed to assemble in order to give us a holistic idea of the market. Some on the team have never flown an Airbus in a flight simulator before. Others, though, have thousands of hours on the real aircraft. And others yet, thousands of hours maintaining and engineering them. The simulation hobby is made up of a very wide gamut of people – and we’ve done our best to ensure as many different experiences are catered for.

In the process of considering what to show, I went for a walk-around whilst on stand to see if there was anything that highlighted the progress made over the last several weeks; just walking around, looking and listening to the aircraft, was making me truly appreciate how far we’ve come, so I figured sharing that same experience with all of you would be very fitting.\

Just do me a favor, and crank the volume up.

Thanks,
Aamir