When possible try to pick an airport with an ILS to land at, at least you can follow the ILS until the synthetic vision gives you a larger view of the runway.
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I was at a diner in ABQ. Old man sat next to me.
Somewhere underground there is a team of people that have access to much we could only imagine. Like holograms and rooms of virtual objects that can be tested just by moving them around. If you look at the 3d printer and where it is today, it is revolutionizing supersonic flight. Mach 9 is possible. That platform will have to be unmanned because it needs a self-destruct capability in case it doesn’t return.
I agree with the sentiments of this thread. For all the quality and polish that oozes out of MSFS, some areas are sorely lacking in quality control.
From the Bush Trips that are well written but full of silly typos and sometimes say “follow X north west” while the bearing is actually to the south west, to the C152’s outside air temperature gauge where 0°C equals 23°F, which exists in no version of the universe except Asobo’s. There are so many sloppy areas, and since release they have slowly grown. I’m an attention-to-details person (yes, aka a pedant 
) so these things sometimes jump out at me and cannot be unseen once seen.
Seb said they’re fixing small bugs all the time, but some of these have been reported almost TWO years ago, including via Zendesk, but in all this time nobody found time to fix them. And these are effectively ‘content’ updates, not core sim functionality, so the risk of cascade effects to apply a quick fix is minimal.
Better testing of content before release, including the Darkstar activity and lack of consistency there (which I also noticed), would certainly be welcome in future.
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I didn’t know there are articles in Wikipedia about fantasy planes. If you were thinking about the SR-72: this is supposed to be unmanned and if a flyable version exisits and has been tested already I would suspect all information about it is classified. So I have no problem with Asobo taking some creative licence concerning the performance.
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I saw a video on yt of someone flying Darkstar to 275.000ft on normal engines only with mach 3-4. Is this an oversight? Bug?
If they adjusted the performance curves in such a way that you could just about reach 270.000 if really putting effort into it, it could be so much more fun as compared to now that you can just slam into the ceiling on normal engines. Especially when google says that scramjets could theoretically reach 275.000ft, which is exactly the sim’s range. I really like the concept of Darkstar, that is why I think it’s a little of a lost opportunity of making Darkstar more immersive. It’s just too OP for now.
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I like the Darkstar, it is a bit of fun even if outside the boundaries of a simulator.
I used it to go from LFBD to KSEA in around 80 mins yesterday, it was a lot of fun and a nice way to get the Frequent Flyer Miles achievement done 
Although I thought I would see how the AI pilot would handle the landing, it didn’t manage it and I took over in the end
from an article on Dark Star in Top Gun:
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer told military blog Sandboxx News that director “Joe [Kosinski] worked with Skunk Works and Lockheed [Martin] to design the plane that’s in there.”
Kosinski revealed that details of the plane are, indeed, taken “out of real experimental aircraft” from Skunk Works.
“For me, just being kind of an aviation buff, and always loving that world, the idea to give people a peek behind the curtain of secret projects…I worked with Skunk Works, which is the division of Lockheed, that actually makes these type of aircraft because I wanted it to feel as real as possible,” he told Comic Book Movie.com this week. “So, every detail of that is based on reality, the way the aircraft functions, the way it looks, all the switches, and stick are actually taken out of real experimental aircraft.”
This is a lot of words for “I couldn’t do it at first attempt”. The Darkstar challenge explains everything well, if you have objectives disabled, especially when you do a brand new process for the first time, that’s your fault. You want a manual for a non-existing aircraft while in a worst case scenario all you need is a YouTube video to see how it’s done – but again, it’s taught in-game well.
You also don’t have to go inverted for the nose down, it’s just easier that way, hence why the challenge instructs you to do so but the description is more general. I usually do it in an upright position.
The graph in the HUD is also correct, only it shows “up to” climb angles not which you have to maintain from the beginning, that’s easily misunderstood for sure. But once you reach the scramjet transition for the first time, you understand how it works and will be able to adjust the whole procedure to your preference or own habits.
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Pointless comment. The MACH profile in the HUD does not work, simple as that. Even if it does, it doesn’t match with the objectives. They can’t even get their 2 sentences spend on this plane consistent. 3 places, 3 different things, one of which doesn’t work.
Anyone know whether going at mach 9 is possible in free flight? That is, can I use the same procedure as in the challenge to go hypersonic any time I want in free flight? Or does that all that only work as part of the challenge?
Yes it is, I just did it this morning, reached Mach 9.70 over Europe.
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Whether it is real or completely fantasy, or somewhere in between… the thing would never be released to flight without documentation on its flight characteristics, and how to fly the darn thing – and there would be consistency across all of that.
I too found that if you follow the objectives checklist, it does not work.
This thread brings up a valid point, and the criticism is valid. It should not have been hard to get the objectives/instructions right, and failing to do that detracts from the enjoyment.
In my view, it falls into the category of “why do it at all if you are not going to do it right”?
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I hit Mach 10+ at 250k+ feet so it’s totally doable.
Also, my guess is this is based off the X-43 project:
Yes in the sim, not in real life.
Yes, you can. I used it to get the frequent flyer miles achievement
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Hey everyone!
I saw all of your message and, well, I can say that I really enjoy the Darkstar.
But, can you explain me what is the easiest way to getting to Mach 9 and to maintain it ? I’ve been trying to complete the challenge for hours, but sometimes my plane goes to Mach 2.7 and then in one second I see my screen doing a big zoom and my Mach gauge is rapidly falling below 1.3 or even 0.95…
Same thing tonight, I’ve finally been able to go to Mach 9, but after maybe 25 minutes where everything was doing well, my plane did the same things and my Mach gauge fall below 5…
What can be the reasons of this brutal deceleration ?
Thank you !
You ran out of fuel
Land it like the space shuttle. Its a lifting body.