iniBuilds

iniSimulations A300-600R(F) for XP11/12 & iniSimulations for XP11/12 As mentioned in our Summer Surprises update work has been ongoing where time allows, on the X-Plane 12 updates to the iniSimulations A300-600R(F) & the Beluga ST. The A300-600R(F) XP12 was updated last Friday and we intend to release a Beluga ST XP12 update soon (this week or next – currently in testing). We will fix the minor logging issue/spelling error on A300-600R(F) XP12. These updates fix the major game breaking bugs that prevented people from using the product due to X-Plane updates. We will no longer be providing full product support for our X-Plane aircraft; A300 & BelugaST, which we are now regarding as legacy products. The constant changing of core XP flight model and engine characteristics without the option to keep a stable unchanged version for compatibility leads to complexity of long-term support. We may update things on an adhoc basis. They will also not be returning to sale through any sales channels. Your product key will no longer be required, and the planes should just work upon load in. We will no longer be providing support via direct support. This will be active upon the next update of both aircraft We thank the X-Plane community for their support over the past 4 years.

iniSimulations A300-600R(F) for XP11/12 & iniSimulations for XP11/12 As mentioned in our Summer Surprises update work has been ongoing where time allows, on the X-Plane 12 updates to the iniSimulations A300-600R(F) & the Beluga ST. The A300-600R(F) XP12 was updated last Friday and we intend to release a Beluga ST XP12 update soon (this week or next – currently in testing). We will fix the minor logging issue/spelling error on A300-600R(F) XP12. These updates fix the major game breaking bugs that prevented people from using the product due to X-Plane updates. We will no longer be providing full product support for our X-Plane aircraft; A300 & BelugaST, which we are now regarding as legacy products. The constant changing of core XP flight model and engine characteristics without the option to keep a stable unchanged version for compatibility leads to complexity of long-term support. We may update things on an adhoc basis. They will also not be returning to sale through any sales channels. Your product key will no longer be required, and the planes should just work upon load in. We will no longer be providing support via direct support. This will be active upon the next update of both aircraft We thank the X-Plane community for their support over the past 4 years.

What variants will be present on release? On release we will have the A350-900 TRENT XWB-84 and the A350-1000 TRENT XWB-97. We have custom data for: EGT (Exhaust gas temperature) Fuel flow for all phases of flight N1 values for all phases of flight THR% data which is specific to modern Airbus family aircraft The A350-900 will have both winglet types available. (Old & New). What about the ULR? We will release the A350-900 ULR variant (for free) post release. What is the ULR? The A350 ULR has a small change to the landing gear and can take extra fuel in the tanks. The landing gear is stronger for the increased MTOW and MLW allowing for the flights like Project Sunrise. Will the A350 have the FLS landing system? Yes the A350 will be fitted with FLS as modern family Airbus aircraft only use the XLS concept with FINAL APP not being used anymore. Will the A350 have the original OIS with the same functionalities or it will be something fictional? The OIS will be something made by iniBuilds but done in the style and format of the real A350 OIS. This allows integration of simulation features into the OIS while also keeping that original look from the A350. We will be aiming to simulate a set version of the A350s OIS system to suit the data we have access to. Will the A350 have functioning OIS screens and OANS on the ND display for BTV and taxi? The OIS will have many functions lifted from the real thing including takeoff landing performance and other ACARS functions replicated from the real aircraft. OANS will be fully simulated along with BTV functions. During our simulator visit we spent along time capturing these details to make sure we have all the data we need Will the A350 come with its HUD? For the A350 family the HUD is quite a rare option and at this time we are not looking at implementing this. What kind of system depth will you go for with the A350? Will it include secondary flight plan and pilot waypoints for the FMS and MCDU? We intend to replicate close to all the MCDU functions on the A350 including SEC F-PLN and if possible; SEC F-PLN 2 and 3 along with pilot waypoints on the ND via the cursor mode. Is the A350 going to have HCF (Heading Control Function)? It's a great feature that makes taxiing a whole lot easier? This feature will be present in the aircraft. Can I please ask if the A350 will come delivered with the ability to do auto step climbs during accelerated simulations? We intend to support auto step climbs and accelerated simulation. At this time, we can’t give a hard value to what level of acceleration will be supported as this can depend on how the final AP and auto flight system react. Will we have the 90-60 call-outs on the A350/A380? Would be amazing to have these as do the real aircraft! This feature will be present in the aircraft. Will the "bogie" movement on the A350's landing gear be animated? We do intend to animate the bogie dropping after the aircraft has touched down for both the -900 and -1000. Will you implement the special “What If” function on the A350 MCU? What is the WHAT IF function? It allows you to tell the A350 on the SEC F-PLN 1 2 or 3 that you have had either an “Engine failure” or “depressurization” and it will then give you an EFOB for the SEC F-PLN DEST and an ETA. We want to try and simulate this function coupling it into the SEC 1 2 and 3 functions. Will you be able to implement different MTOW Variant of the A350? (e.g. for A350-900 there are 250t, 268t, 275t, 280t) In MSFS you have to set one MTOW value as this is what is read from the simulator and we normally aim to go for the highest MTOW version so long as we have good data coupled with this. It would be possible to simulate via the OIS lower MTOW values but the MTOW reported by the simulator would still be the highest value. And lastly, will there be an option for toggling SATCOM ON/OFF for even greater visual accuracy? This feature will be present in the aircraft. Will the A350 have things adding more failures, more options in performance calculations (climb gradients, obstacle clearance and so on) and maybe circuit breakers? We do intend to have a base level set of failures that can be actioned in the simulator along with some other types of failures that we will talk about at a later date! Most of the reset panel will be simulated, these are the closest thing you will get to a CB in the A350 flightdeck. Reset panel 1 and 2 are located on the upper left and right of the overhead and allow the pilots to reset systems that might have failed rather than have to pull a set to CBs on the back wall. We will have more options in the perf calculator to cover climb gradients and obstacle clearance. Is GPS jamming/spoofing going to be simulated on the A350? This is a common thing pilots deal with on a daily basis, especially over Turkey, Iraq and Kuwait, places particularly frequently visited by wide-body aircraft? We want to try and simulate challenges line pilots come across day to day and will have a system to allow this level of challenge to be scaled for each user. Will the product have CPDLC & Hoppie Integration? We intend to have full CPDLC integration using Hoppie. CPDLC in the A350 is also integrated directly into the aircraft not a separated DCDU like on the 320 family. We also intent to have a fully simulated ACARS system with some never seen before functionality which we will showcase at a later date.

Hello all, Thank you all for your amazing support over the past few weeks, and time to wrap it up with our aircraft development update as of July 2024! X-Plane 11/12 - A300-600R(F) & BelugaST I wanted to firstly kick this off by saying we do genuinely appreciate the support thus far; and apologize for the time taken for the updates. We wanted to release these this week, but due to the XP12 changes, there is an FMOD memory leak issue that is still pending as part of what we wanted to update. The team need to re-work the way in which things behave in the package and then we need to re-test. I hope in the next couple of weeks these will be released (and then the products will go back on sale). I wanted to also mention our view going forward. We are reducing the price of these products to 19.99 GBP once they go back on sale, and will do our best to fix game breaking bugs, but won't be adding new features, or attending to minor grievances that are present in the product. We had a good conversation with Thomson Meeks at LR a few weeks ago, and at this time whilst there is no plan to develop further products for X-Plane, the door is always open and things were left on a good note. We want to thank our X-Plane community who allowed us to grow and develop to who we are today. iniBuilds A300-600R Airliner for Microsoft Flight Simulator We wanted to thank so many of you who reached out to us commending us on the v1.1.2 update, and how much you enjoy it! Its fantastic to hear all of you with performance improvements, with a more stable product and the large feature improvements. If you missed our post on this, I highly recommend you take a look here. So what's next? We will continue updating and improving the product as feedback is submitted (especially any urgent bugs reported in v1.1.2). Aviaworx.com reached out about a remote FMS option that a lot of you requested, and we will be working with them to ensure the product is compatible The iniBuilds A300-600R Airliner will be updated free of charge for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Work progresses for the Epic Mod expansion pack. However, we do expect the timeline to slide a little and this expansion pack will be present in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Those of you who wish to use Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020; this expansion pack will not be compatible for you to use. iniBuilds A350 Airliner for Microsoft Flight Simulator We hope you all enjoyed the mini teaser we showcased at the end of the developer stream on Monday! Today is finally the day we can reveal the full teaser showcase, and demonstrate some of the 3D art focused details, along with some answers to the top FAQ on the project. As we progress throughout the development cycle, we will provide dedicated updates on each area of the aircraft either via video showcases or a forum update, so be sure to follow us on social media or join our Discord to be aware of the latest updates on this project! So let's jump right in... 🥳 3D Art Focus: Maintenance As we showcased with the Airbus A300-600R airliner, we have fully modelled engine interiors, that will have cowlings that can be opened, for you to do a visual inspection as you manage the maintenance of your aircraft. These will all form part of the maintenance options and other abnormal situations, that will have to be managed via the EFB. (Examples of some of those features: brake wear indicators, fueling panel, openable APU cowling, openable engine cowlings, APU Mechanic, visible tire wear, RAT, reactive windshield rain). 3D Art Focus: Immersive Details & Dynamic Wear & Tear We have decided to also take things to the next level when it comes to our approach of the weathering of the aircraft. With an aircraft such as an A350 some folks might want to fly a newer aircraft, compared to those who wish to fly a battered 8 year old long haul A350 😄 As a result, as we did with the A300-600R Airliner with dynamic tire wear ( which will also be featured on the A350), we will be introducing dynamic weathering on the actual aircraft. Essentially the more you fly, the more worn your aircraft will visually look. Here is an example of a segment of the wing that we would consider to be at a 'Mild' weathering level. Its going to be visually stunning when we can showcase this in more detail in a few months, but it will add to the immersion as you take the aircraft on an ultimate long haul journey.... Paint will start to peel away from rivets, painted screws will slowly be replaced by unpainted replacements. Sealant around access panels will become more pronounced as its replaced with each opening. Dynamic oil and dirt streaks will appear around areas where leaks are most prevalent. Dirt and grime on flaps and other control surfaces will appear where rubbing against fixed surfaces occur... As you can see above from the 'Mild' weathering level on the wing, an extremely insane level of care, detail and attention has been given to the aircraft, all in our efforts to make this the most immersive, ultimate airliner experience available. These details transcend into other areas of the exterior model that you can see in some of the images below. Even down to the naming of each panel as you can see on the pylon below... Moving to the interior, the focus on detail, accuracy and authenticity continues. The cockpit is coming to life as the team work hard on the systems (note ECAM systems logic is WIP in the above image), with everything from simple screws to a main texture perfectly curated and applied to the model. The use of PBR and detail materials is present on every single element on this cockpit using newly learned techniques to save a lot of memory (performance) but retaining the level of detail to the maximum level. The main focus for the teaser released today is to demonstrate the visually stunning model that we have created, and as mentioned we will cover areas such as systems, EFB, and some brand new features not seen before in an iniBuilds aircraft, over the next few months. Realism & Data Before we move to the teaser, and the FAQ I wanted to address an area that many of you have asked multiple times.. due to the apparent lack of data on the project, how are we able to promise an authentic, immersive experience. The A350 is over a decade old now and quite a bit of data can be found for core systems and overall functionality. We had some missing spots when it came to the data we needed to bring the A350 into MSFS so we regularly rent a full motion A350 simulator for multiple hours which allow us to fully capture these details and fill in any missing information. For aerodynamic data we have a base data package and the simulator allowed us to verify this data. To further complement this data point, we have a collection of dedicated A350 experts (approximately 12) ranging from engineers, pilots and others that serve as a critical but complementary source of information when there is any confusion from the information we have. Rest assured, this product will not only be visually appealing but to the highest level of detail, far exceeding anything else we have produced thus far. 🔥 Frequently Asked Questions on the project thus far We have received many questions on the project, and therefore we have decided to create a dedicated FAQ section as of today addressing some areas from variants, to features etc. We highly recommend you monitor this as this will be updated over time. You can find this here: https://forum.inibuilds.com/topic/23573-inibuilds-a350-airliner-in-development-faq/ Teaser To finally wrap up, the first iniBuilds A350 Airliner Teaser for Microsoft Flight Simulator! We hope you have enjoyed the iniBuilds Summer Surprises 2024, and thank you again for all your support! ❤️

Hello! We hope you are well and excited for today's announcement! 🎉 As some of you may know from Monday's iniBuilds Livestream; the iniBuilds team has grown exponentially over the past couple of years and with that an expansion of abilities. Over the past year we have expanded our aircraft development teams. We expanded our original 'Airliner' team who are renowned for working on projects such as the Airbus' in X-Plane, the iniBuilds A300-600R for Microsoft Flight Simulator and the upcoming iniBuilds A350 Airliner; but also established a new team called the 'Premier' team, who will be responsible for creating a new series of aircraft under the banner 'iniBuilds Premier Aircraft'. The iniBuilds Premier aircraft team comprises of our exceptional high-quality 3D artists and programmers but is further complimented by not only our usual dedicated group of experts including experienced pilots and in some cases engineers on the aircraft, but also individuals who specialize in crafting smaller general aviation (GA) aircraft, turboprops and categories of aircraft that do not sit under our 'Airliner' team. Each one of these projects will aim to push the boundaries of the simulations we have created previously. Through a larger team, with direct access to a variety of aircraft, we're able to conduct extensive flight dynamic testing, ensure greater system fidelity and wrap it all up neatly in highly detailed visuals to elevate the fun and exciting flying experiences you have come to expect of us! With these projects, we also want to bring you along on the journey of bringing such aircraft into your simulators. You will see the work we do, behind the scenes, and get a small flavour of the extensive work done to deliver you aircraft - as real as they can get! Let's jump straight into the first one 😉 Announcing the iniBuilds T-33 Jet Trainer developed in collaboration with SimWorks Studios & AceMaker Aviation - the first aircraft in the iniBuilds Premier series! 🥳 Zip up your G-suit, grab your helmet and strap into the T-33 Jet Trainer! Developed as a collaboration between iniBuilds and SimWorks Studios, the T-33 is a versatile, turbojet training aircraft, used by over 20 different air forces globally. As the first Skunk works project it initially entered service in 1945 as the P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first jet fighter and the 2 seat variant debuted in I948 as the TF-80c, it was then re-designated the T-33. It served in a variety of roles, from initial jet training platform, to advanced IFF trainer to drone director, target towing, aggressors and even flew combat in the Korean conflict! This carefully designed aircraft brings a new level of realism and immersion to your virtual hangars, featuring highly detailed textures that render every rivet and panel with stunning accuracy. The in-depth, realistic systems simulations allow you to dive deep into its intricacies, from avionics to engine management. Experience true-to-life handling characteristics and interact with a fully functional cockpit where every switch, dial, and gauge is operable. SimWorks Studios supported in systems modelling and some flight model elements, with the iniBuilds Premier Aircraft team being responsible for the remaining elements. The aircraft comes with two cockpit configurations to provide maximum customization to those who wish to simulate different scenarios according to their preferences. The Classic cockpit has the following specific gauges amongst the standard suite you would expect: ID-310 Distance Indicator ID-249 Course Indicator ARN-21 TACAN Panel ID-250 Radio Magnetic Indicator The modern cockpit has the following avionics amongst the standard items you would expect: G3X touch single screen Pilot Flying Display (PFD) and Navigation Display (ND) GNS430 Navigation System GTX330 Transponder D10A Electronic Flight Information System (EFIS) GMC305 Autopilot PAC24 Audio Selector Panel (Vertical) The iniBuilds art team have done a truly fantastic job on the artwork on this aircraft! 🔥 Exterior Art Features list: Detailed and realistic canopy covers to shield the aircraft from the elements Toggleable chocks and entry ladder to allow a realistic grounded config. Engine plugs, pitot covers and other ancillary elements to enable a complete walkaround checklist Air show like smoke effects and flares to allow for aircraft displays High-resolution, UHD PBR liveries with historical and modern options PC Only: Pylon-mounted ordnance to allow combat training scenarios. This level of detail and accuracy extended to the interior of the aircraft too! Interior Art Features list: Realistic and removable ejection seat plugs for safety procedures Forward and rear cockpits with interactive controls in both front and rear seats for two-crew operations. Authentically classic steam-gauge and modern glass cockpit instrumentation options. Automatic radio tuning managed through the EFB for workload convenience Crisp, and faithfully recreated detail mapping, stickers, wear and colouring throughout the cockpit based on a real T-33 configuration. This has truly been such a fantastic aircraft to work on as the first aircraft in the iniBuilds Premier Series and it would not be possible without Gregory 'Wired' Colyer from AceMaker Aviation. When working on this aircraft, we wanted to achieve the most realistic simulation of this jet possible, so we were over the moon when Gregory, the most experienced pilot in the world on type with well over 3000 hours in the T-33, was excited to work with us! Gregory Colyer was essential for us to nail the performance and behavior of this aircraft and through multiple feedback sessions and tuning we perfected the aircraft's behavior to work just as he would expect in real life; of course within the bounds of a desktop simulation. But enough talk from us; why don't you see the aircraft in action yourself in our trailer & an extended cut of our very own Matt Yamin paying Gregory a visit to Yolo County Airport, California, in and around a real T-33 and what Gregory had to say about working with us on the iniBuilds T-33 Jet Trainer! 🥳 We are doing some final tuning of this aircraft but hope to release mid-August, and you can expect some of our media partners taking this aircraft for a spin a few days earlier! ❤️ We will also be releasing a walkthrough video to take a deeper dive into the iniBuilds T-33 Jet Trainer! Many thanks for reading today's Summer Surprises announcement, and the launch of something very great in the iniBuilds Aircraft team!

Hello all 👋, We hope you enjoyed the special iniBuilds A350 treats that came with the announcement of the iniBuilds Summer Surprises event! If you missed it we highly recommend you check it out here. Today we released a hugely comprehensive update to the iniBuilds A300-600R Airliner - v1.1.2. You can read the full changelog here, but today's post will cover in more depth some of the updates that have been made in this version. In summary we have spent the past 10 weeks producing and testing this update, and has been tested by over 50 people across our internal and beta testing teams. Further Immersion and Authenticity Our motto at iniBuilds with everything we do, is taking flight simulation to the next level. From the changelog you will see numerous items and areas that have been refined or fine-tuned. 🔥 For example, we have overhauled the PW start sequence, to FMS behaviour to the ECAM logic for the ENG FADEC channel faults. The whole aircraft has had a comb-through of refinements and improvements to deliver the most authentic classic airliner experience available in flight simulation. The full list is available in the changelog and we advise you to have a read if you see some things behaving differently! They might be intended. ✈️ Since releasing the A300-600R airliner project, we have been committed to continuously providing an authentic and realistic experience. It's amazing people in the community like Jeremy who reached out and wanted to support us in that vision. Jeremy is a type-rated pilot on the aircraft and has given us hundreds of hours of insight into enhancing the product. ❤️ He is impressed by what we have achieved and we wanted to share his experience with you all! As a real-world A300-600 pilot, I was interested in giving the IniBuilds A300-600 a real test. It was great to see how far the team had come, even when there's not much info and experience available as the airplane is nowadays practically phased out. However, with my 10 years of experience from both the right and the left seat, I felt there were still some things which needed improvement. Finally, after months of tests and long nights of communication within the team, the A300 is at a stage where it really mirrors the flying experience of the real bird. From the different engine sounds to the way the overhead panel and FMS works, to the quirky PROF (VNAV) descent, it's all there. My advice, don't trust the FMS during the descent, an overshoot or undershoot is highly likely, and don't depend on forecasts descent winds.. She will make her own plan so make sure you are in control! We hope the changes you see and feel are welcomed, and rest assured we will continue to strive to improve the product in this metric. WASM Crashes and Stability Several crashes have been reported across iniBuilds titles and we appreciate these can be very frustrating, especially when you’ve just completed an otherwise satisfying flight in full immersion. Over the past few months, we have painstakingly run through all our code to identify problem areas and reduce the number of crashes. It’s worth explaining in a bit more detail why these issues occur and how we rectify them. So what do we do to fix these bugs? First, it’s helpful to consider that not all PCs (or consoles, for that matter) are built equally. Differences in hardware affect how the simulation runs and is perceived by the user. Add to this, at runtime many software variables such as different combinations of add-on software and random dynamic memory allocation means crashes can be inconsistent. This inconsistency makes finding a specific bug in thousands of lines of code quite a challenge. We then attach a ‘debugger’ to identify the area where the crash is happening. This presents additional challenges because, with the debugger attached, frame rates plummet due to intricate real-time logging. Why is that an issue you ask? Sometimes a particular WASM crash will only happen when the sim frames are running at higher speeds, so it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the issue. But what does this all mean for you as a user? Put simply, our internal testing and beta teams have been flying lots of repetitive situations that were known to cause issues to check that the crash resistance and stability have improved. We cross-checked this with community members in our Discord who were having frequent issues, and this update resolved most cases of this. 🥳 If you do have a crash, its super important you try and reproduce this, and if so send us the full information so we can fix it for all. Performance Improvements We believe you as the simmer should have a complete experience when it comes to your virtual flying, so we strive and provide the best visuals, systems fidelity, effects and sounds. This all comes at a cost that overall affects the FPS in sim. The art and systems team have been busy optimising multiple areas including XML behaviours, texture optimisations, animation handling and system code. The end result is an overall improvement in performance by up to 15% with code executing 300-400 microseconds quicker. This was measured in comparison to our current release version (1.1.1) consistently from a variety of sources and users. Reports from wider beta testing have been positive so we hope you enjoy these improvements. As a reminder, all PCs behave differently, so an improvement might not be immediately noticeable. Lateral and Vertical Navigation Overhaul Whilst updating the rest of the code we took the opportunity to completely redo our Lateral and Vertical guidance modes. Taking account of ARINC424 standards, Airbus Lateral and Vertical Guidance documents, FMGS FCOM extracts and hundreds of hours of testing by real-world pilots. The results are obvious and combined with the stability improvements you will see a consistent and realistic reproduction of how the aircraft operates. Let's show some examples; and in this case, we will discuss HOLD behaviour. Previously hold entry was an issue. As you can see from these examples it now follows hold entry rules. Parallel hold entries were problematic and would wrongly follow a hybrid teardrop-style entry. A teardrop entry would often result in an overshoot condition of the inbound turn. Direct entry holds would incorrectly turn immediately onto the nearest track causing the aircraft to fly a reverse pattern and get lost trying to loop back to the inbound course. Overall improvements can be seen across LNAV with the aircraft with turn anticipation correctly calculated with VNAV predictions, intercepting radial in and out paths and greater track accuracy. VNAV now respects speed and altitude constraints more consistently which assists the LNAV handling overall. Tactical input and flying is still required from the pilot with the vintage style of guidance simulated, but overall improvements are noticeable; as explained by Jeremy above! These improvements will be present in other iniBuilds-created airliners soon. Disclaimer: In very rare cases there MAY be some visual anomalies with flightpaths drawn on certain approaches where speed/altitude constraints exist along a radius. We've confirmed the aircraft will still fly the proper path but want to inform you should this occur - this issue is only present with the CURVES showing on ND option only (a sim'ism added for people to enjoy - the real A300 does not have the ability to draw extensive curves) Something fun to end this technical post! Whilst we have spent hundreds of hours on the above areas, sounds, art etc... we thought let's also look at some of the suggestions the community have submitted since release! We have introduced a custom EFB background template that you can use to show your favourite livery. Instructions: 1 - Use the addon template in the package 2 - Replace the images (freight.png and pax.png) as desired in the html_ui\Pages\VCockpit\Instruments\ini-common folder of the addon 3 - This will replace the background image on the EFB for all variants Well, we thank you for your time reading this technical post; enjoy the hundreds of changes and as always please let us know if any further improvements to the product can be made - thank you for your business and have a lovely weekend! ❤️ 🔥 ✈️ If you would like to purchase the iniBuilds A300-600 Airliner for Microsoft Flight Simulator, you may do so here Happy flying! iniBuilds team 👋

Hi everyone, 👋 I’m Greg Jones and I’m the Head of Scenery and Geospatial Development here at iniBuilds. Greg looking very happy at his desk! 🙂 iniBuilds CEO, Ubaid, explained his vision for the iniBuilds Summer Surprises event this year, and said he wanted to take things beyond just another excellent scenery release. I always love talking about scenery development and this seems like a good enough reason to reveal some of what we get up to "behind the curtain"! I wanted to share with you a little bit of background about our scenery development pipeline and some behind-the-curtain insight into how our vision and efforts find their way into your sim. My journey with flightsim started way back in the 80s when I first caught sight of Sublogiic’s flightsim on my cousin’s Apple IIe iirc. Just a few years later, when I got my hands on a PC, I came across a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 on a bunch of 5.25” discs I was given. I was immediately hooked. Fast forward to 2006 and the advent of FSX; at that point, several tools became available that made scenery development a much more open experience. I was a member of the old AussieX community flight group and an avid follower of the freeware development there. I’d heard that a new version of my local airport, Moorabbin, was being developed by Ken Hall for Orbx and I offered to assist with site photography as I grew up virtually in its shadow. Ken offered to teach me some basic modelling in gmax and together we completed what became YMMB Moorabbin for Orbx. It remains my favourite scenery and the one of which I am most proud. Ken and I went on to produce other small airports together - namely Hobby Field and Longview Ranch. At that point I relocated to England, where I still live. I began working as Project Manager in 3rd party scenery development for a local company. At that time, Goodwood was in production and we would go on to complete a number of small UK airports; Shoreham, Popham, Compton Abbas and Caernarfon to name a few. It was there I first came into contact with development legends like John Venema, Russ White (The Texture Wizard), Bill Womack and Jarrad Marshall. An image of YMMB - Moorabin in FSX - Greg's creation he is most proud of. Sadly, that company did not last but, along with Russ Linn, we took the opportunity to start our own company, Turbulent Designs. At TD we were laser focused on developing the best quality airports possible, within the constraints of the ESP architecture. As well as creating a total of 20 new airports, we were also responsible for updating most of the existing Orbx library to support changes in P3D and porting that library to X-Plane. We also worked with a number of large organisations in aviation, marine and defence industries on various visualisation projects. We even did some work on the short-lived DTG Flight School (remember that one!?). After 7 years with TD, it was time for a change and I went to work, full time with Orbx where I stayed for nearly 3 years. It was during this time, at the end of the last day of FSExpo in Orlando, as we were sitting in the hotel bar with other developers, that the MSFS announcement trailer dropped and it seemed that our little flightsim corner of the world went crazy. We set about re-tooling our development processes to include the new sim which soon became our primary focus. Microsoft Flight Simulator sunsets looking stunning as per 🥰 In 2022, the opportunity to work with a relative newcomer to the industry, iniBuilds, arose. In my first conversations with Ubaid, I was struck by his ambition and vision to achieve the highest levels of quality content available in the market. The iniBuilds team had already released the original version of Heathrow along with Kerry, Shoreham and Queenstown when I came onboard. Buffalo was in its final stages and LAX was well on its way. iniBuilds Los Angeles International Airport - KLAX - one of the first major projects Greg led at iniBuilds 🌴 iniBuilds consists of a team of incredibly clever and creative people spread far and wide across the globe. Being a cloud-based company means that we aren’t limited to only those artists who live locally, but can make use of the very best people available. The downside is that it can be difficult to overcome varying time zones, cultural and language differences. This was my biggest challenge, having spent most of my professional life in an office surrounded by a team. Another challenge we faced was that everyone came from a different level of experience and exposure to flight simulation and aviation in general. It turns out saying “make it low poly” means very different things to different artists! It was essential that we needed to establish a baseline and a set of standards in order to maintain the level of quality and performance we wanted to achieve. This is a process that continues to this day, but thanks in no small part to the efforts of art team lead, George Cass, the team continues to grow and progress in the same direction. The last big difference for me personally, was that I had only worked on a small handful of what could be considered ‘large’ airports. Coincidentally, the largest in terms of the number of models and groundpoly complexity was my good old Moorabbin. An airport like LAX is a massive undertaking for anyone. Not only did we need to produce one of the most iconic airports in the world, it would be only the first fully inhouse iniBuilds airports under our new team. The technical goalposts in flightsim development are always changing and we encountered many headaches and stumbling blocks. Not only are there around 150 jetways all needing to be created and animated, but the area is covered by detailed photogrammetry. Photogrammetry (PG) is both a blessing and a curse; no longer do we need to worry about the laborious autogen process (yes all those trees and buildings in FSX were placed by hand long ago!) and the environment looks incredibly lifelike at the right distance. However, the terraforming tools available in the sim that we would have once given our right arm for are rendered almost useless by PG data. Fortunately at LAX, after many hours of trial and error, we were able to get a satisfactory result, if not exactly what I had envisioned. An example of one of the tools we have for performance enhancement - LOD's! 😲 After the successful release of LAX and armed with the confidence of being able to produce large airports at high quality in a reasonable timeframe, we began to expand the team and broaden our outlook in scope of sceneries. By most sim development standards, our scenery team is very large. Currently we have 28 artists, specialising in various disciplines. Over the years we have honed the team’s skills and we have tried to foster talent within the group. I’ve always found it amazing, and at times frustrating, that there’s no one right way to achieve a development outcome. I’m constantly surprised at the ingenuity of our team to adapt to an ever-changing platform. Many of the comments I’ve read over the years have been disbelief at how quickly we are able to release a new airport product. To the outside observer, it may seem that we never sleep, that we don’t focus on detail and cut corners wherever possible. I can assure you that that is most definitely not the case (except the sleep bit!). As mentioned, we have a very large team spread across the globe. Depending on the size of the project, a large airport generally takes about 6 months to complete once production gets underway. On top of that there’s a lot of planning, site visits and testing to arrange. A small airport such as Palm Springs, could be done in about 10-12 weeks. Having a large team means that we’re able to have multiple projects running concurrently and that some projects may be partially completed by one person, ready for someone else to take up the mantle some time later. This allows us to have projects running more efficiently without any downtime and to not have the team burning out. At any given moment, someone, somewhere in the world is working on an iniBuilds airport & maybe enjoying some pizza on our monthly virtual pizza parties!! Another often-mentioned issue with our airports is performance. Yes, there have been some issues with some of our products and we’re always working on bug fixes and performance improvements. Most of the issues stem from the sheer scale of the projects we work on and the amount of detail and content that we include. Whenever I see a comparison between an iniBuilds scenery and another developer, I always make it a point of checking out the competing product. Usually, there are fundamental differences in complexity and detail that form the heart of our airports. Optimisation is an over-used and perhaps misunderstood term to describe performance of flightsim addons. The guidelines for MSFS optimisation are very clear and well documented but often not adhered to. This is something that we’re very proud to say we follow to the letter, despite what a few nay-sayers might suggest! Combined with a few of our trade secrets, we generally keep things running well. That’s not to say that we always get it right, or that the guidelines are infallible. Some of our best selling airports have been problematic in terms of performance on lower end systems, and this is something that we’re always striving to rectify. We recently completed an overhaul of our largest and most ‘top-heavy’ airports, introducing a more finessed method of both instancing and lodding in our models. This has vastly improved performance in most cases, particularly on lower end systems. As with everything though there’s always room for further improvement and we’ll continue to review and update the entire catalogue. iniBuilds Dubai International is one of our recent larger hubs that has had an extensive update a few weeks ago! 😎 From a technical perspective, our focus has been on finding just the right number of assets that can be instanced while keeping the node count at a reasonable level. As all of our sceneries include detailed interiors, this can be a tricky and time consuming balancing act. In addition, we’re streamlining drawcalls wherever possible while reducing texture resolution across each LOD level. We’ve invested a vast amount of time and energy into striking the right balance and we’ll continue to do so. Airport terminals, as a general rule, don’t lend themselves to lodding very well. LODs and LOD values work best when applied to mostly uniformed shaped objects such as a car or a cuboid building. By necessity airport terminals are long and thin. This means that you end up with a very large LOD radius. You can be both very close (at either end) and very far from the building (in the middle) almost at the same time. This creates a nightmare for performance when considering LOD values. LOD values are calculated (in MSFS at least) using an invisible sphere which will be the size of the largest dimension - in the case of a long terminal model, the ends. The idea of using a sphere is to create a standardized shape around the object that remains the same no matter what perspective you’re viewing it from. This is where it gets complicated. LOD values are based on the vertical height of your display. If a cuboid object is taking up 50% of your vertical screen space, it effectively has a value of 50 or thereabouts (this varies depending on your object draw distance setting). If that object is very long and thin, although it might appear to be taking up 50% of screen space you’ll actually be inside the LOD radius where LOD values are no longer effective. There are ways to overcome this and that’s a large part of what we’ve done as part of our overhaul. Fortunately, in this regard, the future looks much brighter! Our second in command in the scenery team George hard at work reviewing the old Heathrow and identifying assets that need improvements for performance 💻 A lot of people ask us what are thoughts are on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024! We’ve all seen the announcement trailer for 2024, and the thing that struck us most is the amazing ground details that will be available to us. In the meantime though, we hope you enjoy iniBuilds Dubrovnik International - our latest scenery release. It was a really fun one to work on for the team and we’re very proud of the result! A lot of people might be asking what our update policy is going to be? iniBuilds Dubrovnik International available today! 🎉 We have decided that most of our library will be updated free of charge; this will be all products released in 2024 and most in 2023 but there are a select few products that will have entirely new versions made from scratch. Rest assured all current owners will receive a discount on the new versions (which will be significantly better than their predecessors). Well that's for the future, but what about from now till the new simulator? We have a few more updates to do on some of the current library and a couple of new airports to go! Right now, we’re working on a project that I’ve been wanting to do for many years and I hope you’re going to be as excited about it as I am! Can you figure it out!? Thank you for taking some time to read our behind the scenes update! Many thanks Greg Jones & the iniBuilds Scenery Team ❤️

There are updates to the A320neo in production, and look to other products such as the A300-600R. Very complex and accurate animations and modelling. A350 will far exceed anything else that you will have seen produced elsewhere.

Hello all! 👋 We hope you are well, and have been enjoying some of our latest products including iniBuilds Nairobi International Airport which launched a couple of weeks ago. It is already that time of the year, where we are super pleased to announce the iniBuilds Summer Surprises Event! 🌴😎 We've got an extremely exciting event this year - from the 15th July through to the 28th July, we'll be running our Summer Sale with discounts from over 30 vendors and loads of products on offer, with discounts of up to and over 50% off! There will be something for everyone so be sure to tune in and take part! 🥳 All offers will be available exclusively at iniBuilds.com. Not only will we have some fantastic offers across the whole store, but we will have some extreme deals (like we have had in previous events), product announcements and some extensive development updates on iniBuilds aircraft & scenery! 🏔️ ✈️ This year we want to throw in something different, and will be having our first iniBuilds Developer Livestream on Monday July 22nd at 1500 UTC where our CEO-Ubaid and Head of Production-Michael, will be present with our host to share a bit about our journey to date, our processes, future planes but most importantly connect with you guys on a personal level; bringing you into the iniBuilds 'inside circle', to take a closer look at how the fantastic experiences we create for flightsim are produced! 🛫 The stream will be happening on both our official Twitch and Youtube channels to be sure to be following to be notified when the stream commences! In the meantime, we would love to know more about what you want to know! Therefore, if you have any questions you would like answered or feedback to provide that you feel should be addressed please submit them here - https://forms.inibuilds.com/qa-submission ✒️ As a special thank you thus far, and to get you all excited for this awesome event, we have a special sneak peak into our flagship iniBuilds A350 Airliner project for Microsoft Flight Simulator - a formal, comprehensive showcase and development update will be provided during the event, but in the meantime something for you all to enjoy! 🎉 ✈️ Disclaimer: Please note these images are HIGHLY WORK IN PROGRESS and may not reflect the final product. Cockpit & showcasing of two different winglet types as present on A350-900 and A350-1000. Have a lovely weekend! iniBuilds team ❤️