There’s a bit of a mystique around the four-engine A340 airliner. It wasn’t as popular as some of its competitors nor as popular as the A330, its close sibling, however, that has given the aircraft a bit of a cult following perhaps in part because it is rare to spot one. A couple of flight sim developers, iniBuilds among them, are looking to tap into that potential with the release of the first A340 for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It wouldn’t be a regular day in the community without a bit of controversy around a major release and this time its surroudning the A340’s release in the Marketplace exclusively. Let’s have a look at it all!
Four engines for the long haul
The A340-300 in both passenger and freighter variants is the focus of iniBuilds latest airliner release. The A340 comes packaged with iniBuilds usual array of features including high resolution textures, custom cabins, multiple available liveries, high fidelity sounds, custom coded FMS, MCDU, fly-by-wire model, electrical, hydraulic, cabin and environment simulation, as well a custom EFB, CPDLC via Hoppie, Navigraph and SimBrief support.
Some of the extra features include the ability to swap between EIS1 and EIS2 cockpit configurations – the earlier model sporting CRT screens and slower visual refresh rates relative to the LCD screens on the EIS2. The aircraft has visual wear and tear features, GPS jamming simulation, custom terrain radar, GSX integration, and it packs in iniBuolds autosave functionality too.
Marketplace release and other controversies
One of the more unusual pieces to this release is news that iniBuilds are releasing this product exclusively, at least for the first few months, through the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace. That in itself isn’t terribly controversial, many products do release there exclusively, but its unusual for iniBuilds who has spent a significant amount of time building up their own iniManager software and iniBuilds storefront. Indeed, their two prior flagship airliner releases came out there and so news that this latest release wouldn’t show up there immediately has raised eyebrows.
Some users prefer to buy from third party storefronts for a variety of reasons ranging from supporting developers directly to hoping for quicker updates and releases relative to the Marketplace (which has been slow at times).
An iniBuilds forum moderator has provided a statement on the release citing piracy as to the reason why this is the case.
We appreciate the feedback and understand that some of you prefer purchasing products outside of the Marketplace.
For the A340, we’ve chosen to launch exclusively on the Microsoft Marketplace at this time. This decision is primarily driven by the need to protect our work against piracy, as the Marketplace offers the most robust safeguards currently available for high-value, complex aircraft projects.
We’ve experienced significant losses from piracy on recent releases, and ensuring the sustainability of our team and future developments is a top priority.
The update cycle is quick, as we have experienced in recent test builds, that if we submit on a Thursday its released the following Tuesday for example.
We have a patch update already planned for submission on release day so we do not see this being an issue.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
At the moment, we don’t know when the A340-300 will release into the iniBuilds storefront so if you must have it right away, you’ll have to get it on the Marketplace.
The other piece of this puzzle will be the reception of the aircraft. Initial buzz for the A350 release gave way to months of frequent complaints in the community about WASM crashes interrupting flights and frame rate performance making the aircraft challenging to deal with. Will the A340 release manage to steer clear of those same complaints? We’ll have to wait and see.
The aircraft is also exclusively available for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and you can buy it exclusively on the MSFS Marketplace for $59.99 USD.
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