It’s late Friday evening and Mathijs Kok the Community Manager for Aerosoft took to the Aerosoft forums to explain a few things regarding the CRJ, A320 and A330 aircraft, in particular relating to P3D V4.

In a post to the Aerosoft Forums, Mathijs Kok wrote: “Been a long while since I wrote a friday evening update mail but it’s time to explain a few things. It’s 18:20 and I got my glass of wine so let’s get going. It will be about the CRJ, A320 series and the A330, they are all highly interlinked at this moment.

As you know the magic word of the last two weeks was ’64 bits’ (okay, two words). And most of my time was focusses on getting ‘my’ products converted. My products as in the series of Aerosoft products I am responsible for. We had some issues but at least some scenery and aircraft like the Twin Otter etc are released in 64 bit versions. Of course the big projects like the old and new Airbusses are not that easy. Not only because they are more complex but also because they get more attention and we do not want to do straight ports but real P3D V4 versions with all the lights etc.

The plan was to ‘quickly’ do the A318/A319 and A320/A321 and release them in 64 bit versions with (apart from all new lights) the same features as the current versions. But reality quickly raised its dirty head and we had to change the plans. See, because of some unfinished parts in P3d V4 the lights have to be done partly in code and not in effects. Lockheed is working on these issues but we think that doing the in code will be a better solution anyway. To give you an idea, if you do the in effects you have to change the model and recompile it for every test (often dozens to get something right), if you do it in code you just need to recompile the gauge and that’s done in seconds and not 15 minutes as with the model. That means that if you feel the lights are too yellow or something it’s an easy fix.

But of course that means opening major parts of the source files. And that means the developers had to get re-acquainted with code they left two years ago. And of course they felt the new code that replaced it by now (for the A330) was way better then that old ‘junk’. So after a lot of teeth grinding I (as project manager) decided to replace a lot of the old code that served us well for close to 6 years now (!) and use the newer codebase for the A320 series update. Project Managers always want it ‘cheap, fast and stable’ and we mostly settle for two of the three. This time we choose only ‘stable’. It made no sense to release an update for the A320 series now and to overhaul it end of this year again. We have to move these projects to our new shared code base that handles all the Airbusses with one set of files, only with different config files. Just as Airbus does it actually. Now don’t worry, this does NOT really delay the A330. The code still needs to be done for all models and as you have seen today the modeling is progressing nicely. The release and the massive demand for compatible add-ons for Prepar3D does affect all our schedules. I honestly told everybody in Aerosoft it would be big but even I am seriously surprised. Never a dull moment….

Damn, it seems these glasses of wine keep getting smaller every year, be right back.

Where was I? Ahh right… As said the A330 is not really delayed, but the release order is. We were planning to do a new A320 series after the A330 but demand for the 64 bit version is so strong that we simply have to get things out as soon as possible. And that path is shorter for the A320 series then for the A330. So you will see updates for the A18/A319 and A320/A321 in the next few weeks first. Those will be full blown P3d V4 products. With all the lights (every single light can be controlled individually), installer that install in the documents folder etc (very cool btw, you can re-install the sim without re-installing the add-ons). The works. You will also get almost all of the aircraft systems in the new versions. As explained we dropped all the old code and rewrote most of it to the latest standards. It’s faster, slicker, has far deeper sense of the systems behind what you see. You will get an MCDU that is, beyond any doubt, the most complete ever done for our sims (and yes that includes all our competitors). We spend a lot of time on that because as you know we focus on what pilots use and not on systems that have been only oned a few times (or never) in real life. The MCDU is the heart of the Airbus and no effort spend on that is too much.

What it also means is that our idea to release this as a free update is out of the windows. You know that we would never ask you to pay twice for the same files but we had the idea that just new lights and a new installer did not justify an update fee. But now we are talking rather serious stuff. There is around 2 men year of work between what you have no on your disk and the new files. So we’ll do what we always do, make the files, see what’s new and what’s old and come up with a update fee that’s reasonable. My CEO will disagree, he will take my advice, lol.

The A330 will follow pretty fast after those aircraft. And of course if you have the one (or all) of the A320 series you will get an discount because it shares some of the files. Again, we never ask you to pay twice for the same files. And of course it will come in FSX/P3d V3 versions that are similar and P3d V4 version that will have all the additional features. As we see it now the price will be the same for those versions. Please note we have NO plans to drop support for 32 bit sims at this moment.

All the while Flight Sim World is very slowly getting some updates in it’s Early Access stage but we still do not have an SDK and no good idea about the stability of that platform. As there seems to be zero demand from customers at this moment, we are more or less leaving that simulator where it is now.

19:10 now, been working since 08:20. Time for some food and then finish watching House of Cards Season 5. If you got any questions feel free to ask them here. I promise to answer them as honest and open as possible.”

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