“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

Oscar Wilde

Fenix Simulation recently introduced their AirbusA320 to the world. A number of flight simmers have been surprised at their technical prowess – in a short amount of time Fenix have achieved a high fidelity Airbus A320 (unreleased) as showcased on their YouTube videos, and blog posts. It has taken other software development companies (PMDG, FSL) many years to develop an aircraft to this level of detail.

So how did they do it? Speculation is rife that Fenix has in fact incorporated the ProSimA320 systems into their software. ProSimA320, as a rather agnostic avionics software, allows for the aircraft systems to works independently from the platform. This allows the software to be compatible with a range of flight simulators including FSX, Prepar3D and Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS).

One of the first things users noticed were the similarities between the MCDU fonts of the system and ProSimA320.

Matt from Working Title (now an official developer for MSFS) had the following to say:

My understanding is that the simulation is running on the ProSim A320 platform, and that data is just coming out of it and being drawn to the sim displays. So that represents a very significant time advantage, when the plane is already completely simulated and it’s a modeling and interfacing exercise.

Still an interesting product, but some of the claims make more sense in this light (like the nav synthesis, since all that isn’t running in MSFS, so needs to be piped to the external sim).

–Matt

No official word has come from Aamir (Fenix Simulations) or Hanne (ProSim-AR), but further digging around indicates this maybe closer to the truth.

A early screenshot of the terrain system was shared with FSElite.

A similar shot on the Soarbywire ProSim-A320 Simulator

On observation the terrain system looks very similar; the rendering of the terrain below the aircraft symbology logo on the ND is incorrect and also present in both the Fenix and ProSim A320.

There are also vast similarities in the failure options accessible in both Fenix and ProSim.

ProSimA320 Failure Manual
Fenix Failure List (0.2)

Features described on the Fenix Simulation blog such as FLS has also been recently introduced into ProSimA320.

Has Fenix Simulation directly translated features of ProSim into their software or is it simply a coincidence? A secretive partnership and has ProSim licensed their aircraft systems for use with 3rd party developers?

We should find out sooner, rather than later, and my assumption is further comparison between the systems of ProSim and Fenix will provide us with an answer.