I picked up the SR-71 the day it released, however due to the holidays, I’ve not had opportunity for flying the simulator.
I stumbled over it in the Marketplace this AM and was surprised by the low ratings. I know Colin mentioned the Beta getting into the MP. I wonder if that was a poor move.
Anyhow, I know others had mentioned they were picking it up and I’d wondered if anyone has been enjoying it. I still don’t know if I will have time today to get at it, but I am certainly looking forward to doing so.
I think a problem with the ratings is that in the marketplace description it does not mention that it is a beta. At least when I checked. This is a bit intransparent.
I purchased it on their site but honestly I’m surprised about that low rating on marketplace because this is a top-notch product and will improve in the future.
I bought it when it became available but have not been able to devote the requisite time to it yet. I have merely spawned in, inspected the exterior and interior modeling, and scanned through the manuals, both Blackbird- and USAF, which are provided with the aircraft. I have also watched some streams from actual IRL pilots, including Flightdeck2Sim, so I know this is a quality aircraft that will only improve with time. I am off all next week so I will definitely be taking it for some sorties in the coming days.
I picked it up on a whim the other day and I’ve been happier than I expected. While it is a beta, meaning some stuff is yet to be finished, what has been done has generally been very well done. It looks and flies great.
I’ll grab what I said in my discord
TLDR: It’s really very good.
Externally the model is excellently detailed. The stairs even allow you to walk up them to get to the cockpit with a click spot. It comes with about a million liveries which are 99.5% black (of course) from seemingly every era of every SR-71’s life.
It is immersive (enough) in systems and is a joy to fly. I got it up to Mach 3.45 at about 85000 feet but it wasn’t super easy to do. You don’t just point the nose up at full burner and go for it. You need to be going within a certain speed window before the shock cones really do their job and the engines produce more power. You can’t just set-and-forget this thing and hope it’ll all stay happy. Lose that shockwave at speed and you’ll get what is referred to as an unstart, effectively a rollback. Managing that and CG is satisfying.
It’s sensitive enough without being overly twitchy unless you overcontrol at 75000 feet, which is to be expected. The sounds aren’t amazing but are certainly good enough. Other than the voices. Apparently both of the voices are Major So-and-So and General What’s-His-Face with actual SR-71 time. Which is really cool. Unfortunately that means they are both really old and it sounds like two really old men talking to each other. Numerous lines are of the “are you SURE you don’t want to try that one again?” variety. In fact, I’d be happy to contribute my voice to this. To that end, the voiced checklists come to an end with takeoff so hopefully they’ll fill in some more gaps as the beta develops.
Refuelling I didn’t try beyond spawning the tanker. I got way, way too fast catching up to it and then just manually refuelled for the flight. But there are three difficulty settings for aerial refuelling so that’s cool.
Cockpit reflections are grossly overpowering (think: default 24 Twotter) but there’s a setting for that which doesn’t work. Hopefully that’ll get fixed sooner than later.
That reminds me. Settings. There are options for lots of things but they don’t seem to reset until after you reload the plane so no live updating. So long as you expect that, it’s fine.
And while some of these things might sound like me picking it apart, yesterday I did the longest sim flight I’ve ever done (a casual little cruise from Edwards AFB to London) and it happened to be in the SR71. I really enjoy the thing.
Overall it’s a recommendation from me, especially if you are a fan of the Blackbird
I was shocked not to find a dedicated thread to the SR71 here yet. And even more shocked about the marketplace ratings. This thing deserves more attention
I managed to get through my checklists, takeoff, but botched something during the climb and had dual flameouts. Perhaps, due to a funky control binding (I had something similar happen with PMDG’s 737-800).
I cannot wait to get into this more deeply. What a great addition to my collection of simulated aircraft. It is so unique amongst my fleet.
Nice work, Blackbird! I can’t wait to see how it develops further.
I’ve unfortunately had issues that others have reported on the forums - the brakes stop working for me, and the plane sticks to runway surfaces. (The nose won’t lift when I’m on the runway. Works fine once I’m off the end onto the dirt.) But I’m sure those will be fixed, or whatever conflict is causing them will be identified, and it will be right as rain thereafter.
And man, it looks so good even just sitting there…
This plane is just awesome. Im able to get it to 70+FL by the seat of my pants but still havent had a successful descent and landing from that altitude. Im descending carefully but not by the book. Need to review manual. I just did a 700mi flight at 70FL. Had to relight an engine or two during descent. Thought I had it made 15mi from destination banking and descending to catch ils but lost complete control and went down. Not sure what went wrong…
This is an absolutely amazing rendition of a classic aircraft. It’s been worth the wait and the money. I bought the retro Beale AFB scenery as well and it all looks breathtaking. In FSX days the Alphasim SR-71 was one of my favourites and it’s reappearance in MSFS has been my most anticipated plane, and I’m not disappointed in any way …. AND this is the beta, so the few bugs I’ve noticed will soon be ironed out! The important thing is I can get into the air and just about get it back done! So much fun ahead! For younger readers here are three screenshots from the 2008 alphasim SR-71. How far we’ve come; well done everyone at Blackbird Simulations.
I bought it after seeing a recommendation somewhere but I haven’t had the required time to study the aircraft yet. The same goes with their Dirty 30. Blackbird Simulations name itself should be a quality guarantee, so I’m not bothered by ratings. I can’t wait to dive into the learning process how to fly these airplanes.
