Aerosoft has recently shared further information on the development of their Airbus A330 for Microsoft Flight Simulator, including a batch of new images, the entrance into a closed beta stage, and more!

Mathijs Kok, Aerosoft's Product Manager, fed their A330 Preview Thread with a fresh batch of external imagery of their upcoming widebody, along with the information their beta testers can now send exterior shots of the aircraft. He then described the product's current stage regarding models, textures, animations, flight modeling, FADEC, manuals, autopilot, systems, etc. Description of which follows down below, verbatim:

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Modeling, texturing, and almost all animations are solid. No worries about that.  In fact, Stefan and Anne are already working on the next bus. 

Flight modeling, Engine modeling, and FADEC were massive issues, but we are 99% sure we can get within 3% of correct behavior. Any pilot will tell you that is fine as one airframe differs from another. Having two engines on one aircraft that differ by 3% is fine. Don't be mistaken, 3% is pretty much state-of-the-art. 

Manuals and E-manual are more or less okay. The PDF manuals will be fine and available on release, the E-manual which is one of the highlights of the project as we want to get even beginners to be able to fly the A330 will be available but will need to be updated with the latest changes in code.

Autopilot still needs work but is basically not very complex. It flies the route, does a cool ILS intercept, and lands fine.

Systems are more or less okay. This is one area where you can spend another 20 years because where the real aircraft just has to display what is happening, we need to model why it happens. So when a computer decides the cabin needs to be heated a bit, a system will divert heat from an engine to a heat exchanger and feed the warmed air to the cabin. That means the engine will be affected, the electrical system will be involved and that means the generators will need to provide a bit more power. And that drops the thrust of the engine. See the complexity? We have a whopping lot of that code running because of some professional spin-offs of the bus projects. It's there and somewhere in Germany, a developer is crying because no customer will ever see it. 

EFB, we are very proud of the EFB.  and while we need some tweaks, all is well. Navigraph, NavDataPro, weather, runway data, simbrief integration, are all working. I just love to be able to update the weather data automatically before planning an arrival, The fact we incorporated our own sat imagery so you can be sure you are doing your taxi route okay.. cool.

MCDU, LNAV, VNAV... That is where we have most work open. Logically as it is by far the most complex part of the aircraft. LNAV seems to work, VNAV not so much but we know what we need to do. 

ECAMS, loads of tweaks in fonts, placement, and things like that open (we had some bad luck in that part) but it is not code that affects flight.  Still one of my main worries now.

Marketplace. This is the work you need to do to get something on the Marketplace. Not only contracts but a whopping lot of things you have to add. Not complex but I still need a few days on that for sure.

Installer/Protection. With our own Aerosoft One system that is tried and tested (our DRM has not been hacked and has next to makes life for the customer easier (no need to enter any serial!s)) we are not worried about that at all. 

Support, they are fully included in the testing so they should know what they need.

Marketing. This department will be getting all information from me very soon.  They will invite streamers to have a look at the product before release and get the word out to websites and magazines.

Sales still have to make sure that all our associate sale channels get all the marketing data and on release the files.

BaxterChico, one of their testers, has also shared some screenshots:

There's still no information regarding pricing or a release date yet, but Threshold will keep you informed as things progress!

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