It’s not every day that something like this happens in the flight sim community. The alpha for FlyByWire’s A380X, a freeware airliner project with thousands of volunteer hours poured into it, has launched onto the scene for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is quite the moment for the sim and flight sim history in a number of ways. Here’s what you need to know and let’s have a look at a little piece of the community’s reaction too!
FlyByWire A380X is here
This is a remarkable moment in the history of flight simulation. There are few examples of the Airbus A380, Airbus’ Super Jumbo airliner, in flight simulation anywhere. For such a massively complex aircraft to then also be on offer from a freeware developer that has engaged hundreds of volunteers putting in thousands of hours of work to make this alpha possible.
FlyByWire are aiming high with this project offering up a high fidelity airliner experience with detailed modeling inside and outside of the aircraft, high fidelity simulation of aircraft systems including electrical and hydraulic, as well as the aircraft’s avionics including a custom MCDU and other advanced systems. FlyByWire have built an impressive tablet EFB system that rivals and sometimes bests payware options on their A32NX project (an upgrade to the Asobo A320neo).
All of this reads like a payware airliner but FlyByWire is an open source freeware project. It’s available for the first time in alpha, with development ongoing and updates planned to be frequent, through the groups website and through their custom updater software. Download the A380X from FlyByWire, for free, from their website here.
Community reaction
The reaction from the community has been nothing short of instant and incredible. As a freeware airliner, the A380X has become instantly available and folks have been loading up and testing out the airliner by the hundreds and indeed by the thousands.
Here are some highlights from around the community, particularly those shared on the r/MicrosoftFlightSimulator group on Reddit.
We start with this one stating the obvious.
There’s plenty of comments about the details including the incredible cabin.
Yet others have been using Orbx’ Volanta software to track just some of the A380X activity.
This is an alpha and so some quirks and issues are to be expected. This user points out that performance is relatively low, thanks to no LODs (levels of detail) yet implemented. Large numbers of A380Xs at one airport will hurt performance.
Others like to test the limits of what the airplane and the software will allow.
Still others, are enjoying the A380X from afar. This person is enjoying a Fokker F28 flight (I’ll always upvote a F28 post!) with an A380X looming in the distance.
Yet others have found at least one Easter Egg, an Among Us reference, in one of the tooltips.
The community reaction will no doubt continue and go on as more and more people discover the Airbus A380 project from FlyByWire. I too hope to get to flying it soon! Flying the super jumbo airliner should be a truly interesting experience indeed. I look forward to it!
How about you? Are you planning to fly the FlyByWire A380X? Are you going to do short hops or do you intend to cross the earth in multi-hour flights? Let me know in the comments!
Stormbirds 
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