iniBuilds A300-600R Airliner v1.1.2 Update - let's talk about what this update has!

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 👋