Abacus Fly the Airbus Fleet A320-200

This Abacus package contains six aircraft: Airbus A310-300, A319-100, A320-200, A330-300, A340-600 and the A350-800. The package comes with one sound set, which is used by all six aircraft.

Like the other aircraft in the package, the A320-200 is not a work of art. The exterior model does not represent it's real world counterpart very well (just compare the screenshots with a photo of a real A320) and there is only a CFM powered model. The liveries are not very well done. For example, the clearly visible grey lines are not very appealing, the top-side of the wing is too dark and there is no registration on the bottom of the wing. Also, some animations are off or are not present at all. The stabilizer trim is not animated and the landing gear doesn't have suspension.

The flight dynamics are not bad, it is not very difficult to handle this A320. The 2d panels and the virtual cockpit are simple and don't look like the real A320 cockpit. Instead of typical Airbus systems, flap settings, auto brake, etc, many buttons and handles do look like (and work like) the ones used in the FS2004 default (Boeing) panels. Don't expect systems like TCAS and GPWS, those are simply not modeled. A simple FMC can be used to load FS flight plans and ute them in order to auto navigate on IFR flights.

Some nice features are: A passenger cabin which is fully modeled into the virtual cockpit. The default viewpoint in the virtual cockpit mode is the virtual cockpit itself, but with a small program called 'Cabin Views' you can set other viewpoints in the virtual cockpit, like 'Rear Coach Seating' and 'Forward Business Class'. Also, the wings and engines are visible from the cabin windows. With the wing fold command, air stairs, a fuel truck and baggage carts show up around the aircraft.

The engine sounds are great, both the internal and external sound, but do not resemble the A320 CFM engine sound. The engines sound more like the General Electric CF6-80C2 A310 engines. This aircraft and the A319/A330/A340/A350 in this package would benefit from separate sound sets. The 48 pages pdf manual is well written and covers the features of all six aircraft in a user-friendly way.











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