Does anyone have experience with either of these paid-for DLC flight mods? I’ve not paid for any mods and only have downloaded free mods from flightsim.to and put them in the community folder.
But I have been looking for higher altitude faster planes to supplement my stratospheric fantasies that can only be itched by the fake Dark Star right now.
To rip on Dark Star a bit (which I enjoy flying). But it has almost nothing that needs to be done to flying hypersonic, let alone supersonic or trans-sonic.
I want a more immersive stratospheric fantasy.
And the Concorde needed to adjust fuel for center of gravity differently than subsonic aircraft - for instance.
And the SR-71; the life-support cabin temperature was CONTROLLED by the fuel levels. The cabin got hotter as the fuel depleted as the fuel was the coolant and heatsink; and the cockpit glass was over 400F on the inside so the pilot and navigator sat in an oven.
When it comes to flight models I’m leaning toward the Concorde instead of the awesome F104, primarily because the Concorde made mention of the functioning fuel lines, pumps and valves. This suggests to me that the aircraft is more and better modeled.
But I just don’t know. The free-glider community has made some very good gliders per the R/L glider community, maybe the 104 would surprise me?
And maybe there’s a free plane to try that is similar? I looked into the Mig-25 but wasn’t impressed enough to try it. Mostly with the detailing.
It just looked terrible, I thought man this guy put no effort into it - and then I learned that it was true to how it actually was. Typical Soviets, man.
Watching this regarding MSFS Concorde but user experience input appreciated!
400 degrees on the inside ? WOW…You are correct. They were, literally, in an oven.
How hot is the windshield of the SR-71?
The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame. The temperature of the exterior of the windscreen reached 600 °F (316 °C) during a mission.
Yes indeed. The SR-71 to which I have a printed copy of the actual declassified engineering manual (the parts that you could consider declassified) is more fascinating than you can imagine. While I suppose the SR-71 is amazing for its simplicity, as it is really and truly a “simple” aircraft. They overcame some extremely remarkable engineering problems, the heat of which was just one of them.
Being a military aircraft there had to be other overcome hurdles that are just as bizarre. The indents in the chine at the nose are specific military requirements having to do with Electronic counter measures. I’m sure most people wouldn’t even think twice about those indents at all. But it screwed with the supersonic airflow and so…was an engineering problem.
Finding materials that could survive these temperatures is another piece of metallurgical fascination. The materials had to have physical properties that wouldn’t just expand under heat loads and push the plane apart - for instance.
They had to rely on Hastelloy and certain Titaniums, Aluminum wouldn’t work. The Hydraulic fluids couldn’t survive the sustained heating. Etc.
I’ve flown the F-104 a fair amount, and… I feels it’s pretty mid. Some of that is because it’s an old fighter that was built for one thing, going fast up high. It lacks any sort of pilot-friendly UI, and is just a ton of steam gauges. Accurate? Yeah. Enjoyable? In small bursts. The flight model is a little buggy. Roll-rate snapping is still a thing, you can’t roll around 360 degrees without a skip in the roll. The elevators also reverse at full deflection, so you’re always nervous when trying to square the circle. THe other thing to learn is the F-104 has the same transonic handling as the Darkstar, namely you can’t exceed mach 1 in level flight. You need to use gravity to get you through the transonic realm and then you get get up to mach 2.
It’s fun as an example of an old fighter to try, but if you’re looking for high and fast I’d check out the F-15 first.
This was a great review, I think I’m looking more for something with sustained high-altitude cruise. Obviously the Starfighter came up because it achieves near to the world record for turbojet altitude (Mig-25 holds it).
But if it’s just bursts and gravity-fed supersonic and all the other things as you described then it’s probably not very immersive for me. As you mentioned if I want to play around with fighter-acrobatics the F-15 or even the featured F-18/A should be sufficient.
So I’d lead toward the Concorde on that part.
I’d like to hear from someone then if the Concorde is at all any high fidelity or good feel? (Here’s hoping! )
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