However, missing buttons aside and getting on with the flight planning reveals improvement over the A320 and further errors. The MCDU unit is missing two functions as shown by their blank buttons You can set up two approaches, switching if you need to as you get closer to landing. The lack of the ATC Comm button is okay, but the ‘SEC F-Plan’ function is part of the preflight checklist and very useful if you are setting up a long flight and are unsure what the expected arrival runway will be. The secondary flight plan, ATC Comm buttons and functions are not modelled. Just looking at the MCDU, you can see that two buttons are blank. On the previous JARDesign A320, the MCDU had several bugs that really let the side down, so I was hoping the A330 was an improvement. While Boeing is more than happy to help out developers to create the FMC, Airbus is much more secretive. This is where many an Airbus flight sim falls down. The overhead panel is very familiar, differing very slightly from the Airbus A320 It’s interactive, so once you are done with the pre-flight checklist, it will progress on to the next step. The checklist is found on the captain’s window clipboard. If you’ve not flown the A330 or the A320 before, there’s a built-in co-pilot who will guide you through the checklist to help you out. It’s all very familiar though and getting prepped for flight is fairly simple. The overhead panel contains an extra battery for the APU for example. Anyway, jumping in, it’s interesting to see the subtle differences between the A320 and the A330. There are downloads available from JARDesign itself but this is the actual flight manual for the real aircraft, which is a scary place to start for the newbie. In fact, there’s not much in the way of documentation full stop. It’s a good thing I’m familiar with the Airbus as there’s no tutorial provided with the A330. The ground services are a fantastic addition to this A330 package There are plenty of vehicles that can approach the aircraft, from the usual cleaning and catering trucks, baggage carts and loaders, even to limo’s delivering those VIP passengers straight to the aircraft.Īnimated bags load into the hold and the catering trucks add catering Call for the steps and the aircraft doors open when the steps arrive. Call the fuel truck to refuel the aircraft and it arrives, hooks itself up to the aircraft tanks and allows you to set the fuel load via a user display. Introduced with the latest release version of the A330 (V1.2r1 at the time of writing) is a set of ground vehicles that deal with everything concerned with preflight. In wet weather, the rain drops on the windscreen are pretty nice, just to add to the great cockpit textures.īefore diving in for a flight, I have to talk about a few extras the A330 provides. The cockpit features high definition-style textures, somewhere around the 4096 x 4096 mark. The common flight deck layout shared with the A320 and A340 is rendered in fantastic quality. Moving inside to the cockpit, everything looks familiar. The Airbus livery looks good and the external model is finished to a very high quality. The A330 only comes with one livery but you can download others for free. On loading and activating the aircraft, I was greeted by the Airbus company livery. Having enjoyed the JARDesign A320 previously, I had an idea of what to expect with the A330 – I was not to be disappointed. So, thank goodness for X-Plane developer, JARDesign, which has recently released a brand new A330-200 for X-Plane 10, but is it any good? There are a few products available that are light on depth and horribly dated. The A330 is everywhere it seems, except in the flight sim world. It’s so unassuming and yet over 1000 have been delivered since its introduction in 1992 and the aircraft is popular with passengers and pilots alike. The Airbus A330 is something of a dark horse in commercial aviation – incredibly popular but somewhat overlooked in the world of the Boeing 777 and the 787.
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