FlyByWire A380X alpha comes October 31st

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Freeware aircraft developer FlyByWire have announced that their Airbus A380X project is coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator on October 31st. It’s a project years in the making and we’re all finally going to get our first taste of it in just a few days.

Out of the hangar, prepare for takeoff

The team that came together to add functionality to the Asobo A320neo very quickly grew to the point where developing their own airliner was a possibility. And what a challenge they took on by going after the world’s largest passenger airliner – the Airbus A380.

This is a complex, seemingly high-fidelity, simulation of the jet and FlyByWire have stated that although the aircraft is in alpha and features are still being developed, it should be possible to take it onto Vatsim and do a realistic simulated flight. That’s pretty impressive.

The airliner also takes advantage of a lot of the groundwork that FlyByWire has laid with their A32nx project and you can expect their in cockpit EFB/tablet interface to come with a ton of features.

Learn more about it by watching the live stream, released yesterday, to get a sense of the project and its details. And then look for it to launch via the FlyByWire installer on October 31st.

4 responses to “FlyByWire A380X alpha comes October 31st”

  1. Canada One Avatar
    Canada One

    Cool! 🙂

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  2. PaperPilot Avatar
    PaperPilot

    I wonder what FlyByWire’s next aircraft will be. I think that the most logical aircraft to take on next is the A350, which includes the A350-900, A350-1000 and A350F. The reason why I think the A350 would be the most logical direction to head in is because firstly, the aircraft has some similarities to the super-jumbo in terms of systems and cockpit layout. Secondly, the A350 has proven itself to be a very popular aircraft in the real world, and thus a need for a freeware high fidelity A350 would become increasingly necessary for those who want to train on one and doesn’t have the money or the trust in online banking. However, the A350 sector of the MSFS market is already being covered by both iniBuilds and Digital Flight Dynamics, and thus if FlyByWire was to enter the competition to make the best A350 for flight simulation ever made, this sector would become too crowded for comfort. Plus it would be courteous to let developer teams like Digital Flight Dynamics to prove how good of a team they could really be without being discouraged from continuing their own freeware A350 because of increased competition. So I guess the best option would be to make their A320neo family as realistic as possible. Having an ultra-realistic A320neo family (A319neo, A320neo, A321neo, LR and XLR) in both MSFS simulators would be really handy to have because this is a really common aircraft in our present day’s era. It could also encourage future pilots to start their careers in aviation.

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    1. Urgent Siesta Avatar
      Urgent Siesta

      I’d say that FbW still have a couple years of work on the A380, and they’re still developing their A320.

      My bet is we won’t see a different FbW aircraft for at least several more years.

      An interesting opportunity would be for them to do the A220 as that is still largely an addon where there’s not a lot of development happening.

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      The A350 is a logical choice if they want to keep going with the avionics that they developed for the A380. iniBuilds is doing the same thing, just in reverse order.

      I agree with Urgent Siesta that its going to be several years before that’s realistically a conversation that we can have. FBW have a long road ahead on the A380 and as a freeware dev group they are fueled by volunteers who are doing this when they can in their spare time. They can leverage some impressive resources this way too and have shown themselves capable but its going to take some time.

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