A300-600 Msfs
Manases Yatnalkar
I've never seen a UK based gaming software company price their product in GBP ex the vat?? Slightly underhand way of making the price look appealing. The Facebook page clearly states that you can buy the product for 69.99 GBP and nowhere does it say exc VAT.
3. They can sell it before msfs and other good addons draw some of customer's attention away, so they didn't finished whole package. (To be honest, a good passenger cockpit can be time consuming for example fjs spend almost 9 month to build the passenger cockpit for 732)
Beside, everyone is talking about the complexity/depth balabala, and they deserve it (Though I agree with the depth). But will an aircraft coming from 80s more complex than a319/320/321 even modern 737s in custom avionic wise? I highly doubt about that. Maybe it got some quirky feature, but that's it.
The fms, as everything in this aircraft, is complete. Better than I can explain : just watch the first episode of the training videos on YouTube and you will understand that this aircraft is a special one.
The only (major?) downside I'm seeing so far is that the outside textures seem to be really bad, not worthy of such an expensive addon. I hope they'll work on that. I really expected more from inibuilds considering they're making all those liveries.
Apart from that (and the GE sound bug), it seems to be the best XP addon currently available. The price... is okay but if you're charging P3D premium addon prices, you better provide similar quality when it comes to textures.
It's been 20 years since I flew it, so I may have to go to my old Operating Manuals to see just how detailed the systems modelling is, but I should be able to render a quick opinion on the overall flying realism of it in an hour or two. I'll probably do a full-on review over on Flightsim.com, but that may take a month or so to get online. Anyhow, on to the left seat!
But I digress. A quick and dirty rundown for now - order and download no problem. It comes as a zip and it unzips itself into the correct folder (extra aircraft, in my case). It looks very very good, outside and inside - see the two images, one of the actual cockpit of the last A-300-600R that I flew at AA back in 1999. Its been way too long for me to remember the actual workings of the systems, but at this level I have enough general knowledge that I can get just about anything up and running as long as I don't have to worry about breaking anything! It all works like I remember it did (but keep in mind - 20 years ago!).
I thought the sounds were great. I took it for one trip around the pattern - literally, since it only had about 8000 lb of fuel and I did not inquire as to how to get more - that's for later. Response to my control inputs was excellent, and it "flies" very much like an A-300 or a 767 in terms of what your control inputs result in. Very good pitch attitudes for the few phases of flight that I tried, especially on approach and landing. Landed just like a big jet should - good pitch attitudes and power response. The only thing I will have to tweak is the pitch trim is a bit sensitive - that is, a little bit goes a long way, perhaps a bit too long a way. That is actually somewhat typical of XPlane, in my experience - a twitchy pitch and pitch trim response compared to how those work in the real world. But it is not off by much, and it can most likely be tweaked in settings. Maybe bend the response curve a bit - I do that with the nose wheel steering on most all XPlane aircraft.
You'll have to consider this one carefully because of the price - this will end up delaying my purchase of FS2020 for a few days at least! But unless things change as I delve further into this, I think this A-300-600R is a winner!
Another trip around the pattern, this time starting from scratch (the cold and dark start that I never had to actually do in this or most other jets!). Everything seems to work just as I recall it. I'm going to have to do something I don't normally do - get into the books on this so I can tell if it is correct to the last drop! It's been too long since I flew it.
Again, the actual flying of it seems quite realistic compared to the real thing, at least to the extent that anything driven by a PC with a Thrustmaster HOTAS T stick can "feel" realistic. And also again the pitch senstivity (the amount of pitch change versus stick movement) and the pitch trim sensitivity (amount of pitch trim actually input per click of the button) seems a bit lively. I will look into seeing how this could be dampened out just a wee bit in the settings of XPlane itself. This is probably not something that someone who had never flown this airplane in real life would notice right away.
On the replay, the landing gear (in an outside-the-airplane view) seems to disappear into the belly - the wheel well doors are not visible in the open position and it is as if they had remained closed. I don't know if that is the case all the time or if it is an artifact of the replay, but it manifested itself on two separate flights. If it happens during the original run, it is a problem that will need to be addressed.
It even simulates brake temperatures, and the brake fans work too, although I think the temps tend to get a little high and the fans don't cool things down as fast as I recall they did on the line. Still, that's some real depth in systems.
The FMC is not at all like the ones we had on the AA birds, but there are at least two real world major manufacturers of FMC systems and this may depict one that I had no exposure to. The ones we had in our airplanes were very similar (almost identical in fact) to those on the 757/767 fleet. The one depicted here is quite different; and in fact, although I was able to initialize it, I could not for the life of me figure out how to enter a flight plan - there is no LEGS key, and no DEP/ARR key. Nor does there appear, at first glance anyway, to be a way to input a route into the flight plan page. Small problem since I was staying in the pattern, but I will have to look at the video tutorial on the FMC to see how it works.
This time I flew around KMIA, the actual venue of many of my A-300 adventures back in the day. While I had been pulling down frame rates around 30 on the first flight, at KDOV (my old C-5 base), my Miami scenery is much more detailed than the 2D rendition of Dover AFB, and while I still got 25-30 at KMIA at night, when I switched to day the frame rate dropped to 17-19 on final approach. As you probably know, while that is low enough to trigger an XPlane alarm, it did not result in stuttering or jerky updates. The screen was still quite smooth. But of course time slowed down, as it does in XP - not enough to make the flying too unrealistic (as it might down around 10 fps) but enough, as I said, to trigger the message about reducing the complexity of the settings (mine are around the middle of most settings, but my computer is low end - i7-3770 at 3.4ghz with 16gb ram, GTX 1050i with 4gb vram). That it runs at all on such a rig is impressive, and it should run fine on anything with more clout.
I'm still liking this a lot, and I now have just about every jet I actually flew either here or in FSX - Boeings 727, 757, 767, Airbus A-300-600, and T-37 and T-38 (FSX). All I need now would be a good Boeing 707, and the C-141A and C-5A and things would be complete. Oddly enough aside from the ubiquitous 737 NG, I have never had any inclination to seriously simulate any airplane I never flew in real life, in part because I know that it would be impossible to know just how accurate it was without the real world experience. And lets not forget - I have never, prior to now, had any inclination to "get into the books", preferring instead to rely on actual knowledge. Every now and then I have the urge to learn a new erzatz airplane, but I go lay down until the urge passes!
Price will be a stumbling block for many, no doubt about it. 95 bucks is stratospheric. And considering what will happen on the 18th, now just over a week away, I guess you really have to want this particular airplane to spring for it right now. I did, and I am not disappointed. This is a versatile airplane - we used it for runs from the USA to England and Paris, the Caribbean, and short hauls like JFK - Bermuda. Even a few domestic legs at times, like MIA-ORD. To say nothing of co-terminal ferries from JFK-EWR and back. I even had an actual pilot training flight in one, from JFK down to NAFEC at Atlantic City and back. Passenger wise, American was the only airline to fly this model in the USA as far as I recall. Eastern flew the original A-300 but that was different up front, with a flight engineer. The A-310 was the first Airbus that had the two man cockpit, and in fact the 310 and the 300-600 share a type rating - mine actually says A-310. The 310 was just a shortie, and Airbus grafted the automation onto the larger A-300 fuselage. It is also the last Airbus prior to the sidestick cockpit, which I detest and thankfully never had to fly.
You Tube now has enough coverage of this, including a new video today from Jeff Favigniano, that you will be able to get a good idea of what it looks like and how it performs. Take a good look - its well worth considering!
I have very few add-ons for X-Plane, but the ones I do have I fly the wings off. This would be my first "serious" airliner I have purchased for X-Plane having seen it in development a few months ago (I'm boycotting FS2020).
I was looking at the A320 by the various competitiors, but the A300 has the same avionics suite as another aircraft (the other aircraft borrowed them from Airbus), and I've always liked the A300 but no-one ever did a detailed model.
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