For a little over 50 Euros you can have an animated First Officer for the Fenix A320 which should, if you read their descriptions, bring order, give you companionship in the air, and ASSIST you in cabin workload through the FS2Crew addon. To get the animated FO you have to also purchase their base Fenix product. I tried to find reviews and videos prior to my purchase and did find one and the guy (who is quite animated and feisty) made absolute fun of the copilot but the video seemed over the top and I took it with a grain of salt. I think he titled has review “A FO I can Scream At”. I should have listened. You interact mostly through voice commands and he got to where he was screaming them by the end of his flight.
Install is confusing and it all gets put on your C: drive. No options to alter that although they did discover where my community folder and exe.xml file were located. They have separate products for all the major big jets so you have to choose which version you want to install so the addon knows what plane you are using it for and still at startup each time you have to go through this list of all the other options and choose again which product you want to run. It defaults to the first on the list which is a PMDG 777 I think. The first time I tried to use it, I didn’t know there was a separate choice from the base option for the animated copilot and my copilot sat there cold and dead and unable to be changed. There is a program that only runs once the sim is started where you can set up your parameters but that is a separate window you cannot see in VR. Instead you get a toolbar dropdown that has absolutely minimal information and choices on it. You can’t skip over steps unless you have voice commands memorized. There is a rather extensive .pdf documentation file included with the base package but none for the animated FO. I had to join their Discord channel to get some answers to get things running.
I bought these products thinking the animated copilot would reduce my cabin workload substantially and bring some additional realism to my flights. It has done exactly the opposite, creating major confusion, having undesired actions taken that have delayed or imperiled my flight. If I go down the various steps and checklists (which in VR are an absolute hassle since only the toolbar dropdown can be accessed) you add a number of factors into your workload such as windows suddenly ending up open, the copilot turning off vital switches, her mishearing commands and suddenly changing heading, my EFB ended up unplugged somehow. After a few absolutely frustrating flights in the Fenix A320, the last one I flew I started the copilot but muted her so she wouldn’t hear any external noises and then did not say or type one thing to her the entire flight. I thought she’d just sit there looking lifeless (with her glowing unrealistic skin) other than the blinking. No, after a half hour of getting the plane refueled and boarded and fully programming everything myself, I began to start the engines for taxi to the runway only to discover she’d turned off all 3 avionics switches so now I had to wait 5 or 6 minutes while GPS initialized again.
In conclusion, I just wasted money. I’m uninstalling this mess today.