I’ve been hoping to see some updates for iniBuilds A300-600 and I was surprised yesterday when they announced that they had just released a significant update that had focused on performance. I’ll admit, I’ve heard that before and been a bit skeptical on how much real world improvement I would see. Benchmarks are one thing but how it “feels” in action on my own system… that’s where it really matters. And I can confirm that it’s running great on MSFS 2024! Finally! Let’s talk!

Struggling with frame rates and drops

I did a full review of the MSFS 2024 version of the iniBuilds A300-600R(F) after a couple of years of flying it back in 2025. I gave it good marks except for performance which was a bit of a challenge and disappointment.

Double disappointment for me as it was one of the first airliners that I really got into and I built that confidence up flying the iniBuilds/Microsoft A310 in MSFS 2020. The A300 has nearly the same systems setup, however, iniBuilds released the A300 as its own separate product and has put quite a bit of time and effort into it over the years. That said, it did feel like it was playing second fiddle to some of the more recent releases.

The worst part was when I did the upgrade from the MSFS 2024 compatibility edition (which was free) to the Premium MSFS 2024 native version (which cost a bit of money to upgrade). The Premium version performed slightly worse than the compatibility version did and there were weird differences in performance between the passenger and freight versions that further added to the woes. It wasn’t catastrophic and I generally gave the airliner good marks, because it is a solid product most of the time, but performance was an issue.

Fortunately, I think maybe iniBuilds has finally solved that issue with this airliner.

How is it now?

In a word? Smooth! In two words? Much improved!

iniBuilds benchmarks on low and high end systems showed increases of 10-15fps in most situations and that I can happily report is the case. The smallest difference is at cruise where there’s less stuff to render but the real benefit is at a large airport with a lot of stuff to render. I was sometimes seeing single digit framerates as the aircraft would stutter. It was not great! I was able to improve that with some tweaking of my MSFS 2024 settings but no matter what I did, this airliner performed worse than the 777-F from PMDG or the Fenix A320ceo.

The biggest difference is not in raw frame rates for me. At cruise I can see 60 to 80 fps but the A300 would constantly be “hitching” or “stuttering” with frame drops depending on when I moved the camera or some other unknown behind the scenes issue. Now, it seems to be running much more smoothly.

Even on approach to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, those low end frame drops are gone and instead you can just focus on flying the airplane smoothly in for a landing.

Frame rates on the ground are steady dropping to the mid 40fps on my system. Again, there is a drop that is expected with complicated airport scenery, but its not the consistent frame rate necessarily but the deep drops and the stutter that really ruin the experience. Now gone!

In another flight, I cruised into Detroit in thick fog and again no stutters or frame rate issues. The only cursing was from my difficulty staying aligned with the ILS in near zero visibility conditions.

But I did it! And I stopped thinking about fighting the frame rate.

Plus!

There have been some other changes to the product. iniBuilds tweaked some visuals (I haven’t noticed) and added a couple of new features. The biggest one on my list is the addition of a new top of descent pause feature. You can plug-in the value you want (say 40-50 nautical miles) and the aircraft will pause when you hit that point.

This is great for longer haul flights where the aircraft will do its thing on autopilot, flying the assigned route, and once it hits the predetermined point … it will stop. Until you tell it to go again! If you’ve stepped away to do laundry, or run an errand at a local shop or some sort of other thing has come up, you’re fine because the airplane is ready and waiting for you to take back control and bring it in for the approach.

Confirmed

So there you have it! My personal experience is that iniBuilds has actually made a tremendous step forward for the A300 project. It’s been with us for a few years now and its not the hottest new product on the market but I feel like freight flyers and classic airliner pilots are going to appreciate that this aircraft is now back in tip-top-form offering everything it had before and running much more smoothly on MSFS 2024.

Does that mean I’ll be doing some more cargo ops again in the A300? You bet I will! My enthusiasm for the A300 is back up and that’s terrific. More of this where aircraft are refined continually and long standing issues get ironed out.