Fenix A319 & A321 Expansion Released!

Posted August 19, 2024

Hey all,

We’ve just made the A319 & A321 Expansion available for purchase in the store. Once you’ve purchased the expansion, just restart your installer and it should be ready for you to install. We sincerely appreciate your patience, and we hope you enjoy flying our second ever product. From the whole team and myself, thank you for your support!

A reminder on our pricing - for customers who already own the A320 base package, the A319 & A321 Expansion package is available for £39.99 inc. VAT. For customers who are completely new to Fenix, and do not own the A320 base package, a limited time bundle is available at £79.99 inc. VAT - which gives you a 20% discount on the A320 base package!

A polite request to all customers, the roll-out is occurring on a lot of new infrastructure. If something doesn’t quite work right, please be patient with us - we’re here to help so just reach out and we’ll give you a hand here: https://fenixsim.com/support/

For those purchasing the expansion package, something to remember, and a bit of a warning - the A321 is a performance limited aircraft, there are going to be instances where you’re not going to have OEI performance to make it out at MTOW, or even close to, so please bear that in mind - it’s not the simulation being unable to do a single engine departure, it’s the actual aircraft. We’re working on infrastructure to warn you about this, but it requires a bit of cooperation from the dispatch and loading side too.

For everyone - the handling is going to feel different. Please remember that and try to let it settle for a couple of days before writing in a ticket with feedback! The aircraft is much more responsive, so bear that in mind.

As promised for our A320-only customers, we have pushed an update to you all which brings the 320 in line with some of the new shiny toys available on the expansion package, the changelog is below - it includes the new handling upgrades, the fly by wire upgrades, and a tonne of bug fixes and improvements we made to the general infrastructure in and around the family of aircraft. Have fun :)

Finally, just in case the fine folks at Simbrief don’t manage to get it uploaded in time, here are the Simbrief Profiles for all types:

A320 V2.2.0.313

(This changelog is for the A320 update ONLY)

Avionics and Systems

  • Fixed non-repeating retard callouts
  • Fixed wind heading jitter during no wind conditions
  • Improved FBW roll control during landing
  • Fixed alternate fuel not being calculated after takeoff
  • Fixed RMP SEL light logic
  • Fixed reading lights not working
  • Tuned alpha protection
  • Added cabin light flicker during engine start
  • Massively reduced input delay for FBW
  • Retuned all PIDs for faster inputs
  • Retuned all protection executions for faster inputs
  • Added ground effect compensation system
  • Improved flap extension and retraction speeds, plus added easing to the animation
  • Improved IAE asymmetric thrust tables
  • Improved roll feedforward to make it adapt to airspeed
  • Tuned alpha protection for all variants
  • Tuned FBW for all variants
  • Tuned auto land for all variants
  • Fixed spoilers not extending in some situations
  • Fixed oil pressure not showing red below the 60 PSI threshold
  • Fixed G LOAD showing +- value
  • Fixed constraints with 5 characters not being left-justified
  • Fixed glide indication on LS ROSE not respecting brightness
  • Fixed LS course not being available in LS rose mode
  • Fixed more than one config memo showing
  • Fixed SPEED mode being activated when thrust set above AT limit
  • Improved performance very slightly
  • Fixed spoiler disarming when unpausing if a spoiler axis was assigned

Art and Sound

  • Improved exit sign / emergency light brightness
  • Fixed incorrect min animation values on flaps
  • Added new cabin emissive
  • Added new cabin window textures
  • Added copy of Interactions.xml without highlights
  • Improved flap position and animations for all aircraft types
  • Improved fan blade animation at low RPM
  • Fixed flickering on belly panel
  • Fixed rivet normal issue on nosecone
  • Fixed cargo door handle decal flickering
  • Fixed incorrect material assignment on aileron rivets
  • Fixed triangulation issue on elevators
  • Fixed glareshield texture regression from .407
  • Fixed flap decals being cut off
  • Fixed rear window inner frame having a gap
  • Fixed artifacts on MECH call button
  • Removed unused effects
  • Added cockpit vibration sounds
  • Improved CFM N2 sounds on approach
  • Fixed AIR COND decal missing from overhead panel
  • Fixed cabin windows at night and further improved textures
  • Fixed window blind ambient occlusion
  • Fixed flickering on flap canoes
  • Fixed CFM engine start too quiet
  • Fixed wind sound not looping
  • Improved IAE buzzsaw
  • Fixed RAT door not opening on all variants
  • Fixed Elec Hyd. pump sound volume across cabin/cockpit
  • Fixed exterior packs not being audible after engine start/dual pack ops
  • Fixed cabin volume levels for cab fans and packs
  • Added MLG extension/retraction sounds in cabin
  • Slight adjustment to flap sounds
  • Fixed engine reverser noise in flight
  • Fixed volume of nose gear vibration on rotation

EFB

  • Fixed EFB messages sent during aircraft boot being cleared
  • Added ability for announcement packs to include an EFB background by adding a PNG or JPG to the announcement pack directory. Custom user BG’s override this: https://kb.fenixsim.com/specific-efb-backgrounds
  • Added aircraft type to status bar
  • Added ZFWCG symbol to mass and balance chart
  • Improved cargo distribution based on aircraft type - payload is loaded into different compartments based on passenger load and other factors, before all payload was equally split between all holds
  • Fixed EFB getting stuck while loading if it couldn’t fetch the METAR
  • Fixed some cases of high flex temps outputting TOGA instead of max flex
  • Added ability to change the cabin light brightness. More improvements planned in this area
  • Fixed take-off weight input not automatically submitting when using KG. LBS will still need to be manually closed if weight is less than 100.00
  • Fixed runway slope not being factored into take-off performance calculations - previously a static conservative runway reduction amount was applied to improve performance results
  • Fixed flex temperature not reducing as much as expected as runway elevation increases
  • Fixed some bad take-off performance calculations when in WET conditions
  • Reduced the size of view METAR/TAF/ATIS buttons
  • Fixed TOPL limited results not showing the highest TOPL result available
  • Updated SimBrief aircraft performance profiles to use the correct flat rated thrust temperatures
  • Various bug fixes in takeoff performance calculations

Flight and Engine Models

  • Input latency specific fixes/adjustments
  • Implemented custom externalised ground effect controller
  • Implemented initial tuning of ground effect controller
  • Implemented custom externalised taxi friction - unfortunately as with all aircraft, when it is wet it gets significantly more sticky - we haven’t been able to fix that core-sim behaviour yet, we hope Asobo take a look at this soon.
  • Adjusted ram drag on dead engines
  • Slightly untwisted wing root
  • Adjusted parameters influencing wing stalls at high AOA and extreme low speed
  • Reworked reverse on all variants except A320 IAE

Installer

  • Fixed MSFS not being detected when starting in a non-admin account
  • Fixed Installer not launching in some cases from non-admin accounts
  • Fixed some cases where download/install will hang and not complete
  • Fixed multiple downloads being queueable at once