XB-70 Valkyrie work in progress

Hello, I am converting my XB-70, developed for FSX, to MSFS 2020. I will try to improve materials with PBR and general details level. I would like to share my work with someone who could help me developing the simulation aspects, for the moment I am working at the model (in blender 3.4).
A lot of work is still to be done in order to make it flyable again… but I love this plane (or spaceship ?)

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And this is the exterior model. Just a few improvements over the FSX model, great work still needs to be done, many details that looked pretty satisfactory in 2008 now seem much too simple and not enaugh realistic, but the overall view looks not so bad to me…

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XB-70 in flight


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Sir you have a customer right here when this gets released. Are you planning to make this accurate to the real aircraft as far as flight model and system functionality? The visuals are looking great. Thanks for posting.

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Thanks. I became rather expert with FSX aircraft configuration, but with MSFS is another story… for the moment I am only developing the model, but yes, I would like to make it as realistic as possible, it will take a long time to get out of the “design table”, mostly because I have to study all the differences in configuration required for MSFS 2020. Also consider that this is an airplane with extreme performances and this makes it even more difficult to configure properly.

On FSX I modeled and configured everything by myself, but now I don’t think this will be possible…

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Well, there’s some brilliant minds hanging around the forum? Shouldn’t there be a dev-corner in this forum? Good luck on the build!

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You’rel likely to find the most aircraft-creating knowledge here - Discord

I’m following this!
Visuals look better than some non FSX ports in MSFS.

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Paging the Got Friends team… they seem to lend their hands to help on projects (although they are probably busy) The modeling looks awesome.

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Wow - I had 3D modelling experience in the older days but this would be outside of my knowledge levels. :slight_smile:

Thanks for your positive feedbacks and comments! Developing a model is an exciting task, and knowing that people are interested in possible final result helps to stand the long period of late night working and dealing with hundreds of animations, failed attempts to solve issues, headaches studying the SDK documents and things like that. I have a different job during the day, so developing the model is something that I can do after dinner, or sometimes during weekends, especially when it is raining (… but is still raining somewhere in the world ??? or better, yes, sometime it rains, but all the rain of one year in only 2 days!)

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Amazing news! One of the sexiest planes ever in my opinion.

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Hello, work is progressing, the Valkyrie is airborne and with some animations, both inside and outside, just the basis, but she’s flying again!
It will be a long process, because there are hundreds of parts to animate accurately and I am completely remodelling many parts and re-creating textures at least 2K but I am planning to reach 4K (they are made with vector graphics so this will not be a big issue, I can scale them up increasing the resolution just scaling all up).
For all of you who loves this extraordinary airplane I suggest this video

it really gives you the idea of how complex and sophisticated machine it was, but also gives me the meaning of trying to reproduce this… I’ll have to choose a compromise otherwise the development will last years!
Soon I’ll post new images directly from MSFS, but they won’t represent at all the final result.

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Modelling the nose gear

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I hope you find good help on your project, Airmax - I can think of a few folks who would love to fly their Zippers alongside the Valk, albeit at a safe distance from those wingtip vortices lol
It was an amazing airplane in its day.

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As promised a first in flight screenshot. Tape gauges are still to be created (it is not easy to convert them from my xml gauges…) but many analog instruments are working, at least partially. Many things to fix on flight model and almost all cfg files, but she is flying pretty well.
Also raindrops on windshield are activated with Environment_occluder cube around the windscreen.


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It’s hard to believe this plane was real, much less that it was designed, flown, and retired long before I was born. I’ve seen the one in Dayton, OH and it was mind blowing.

Good luck. Maybe the DC Designs folks can give you some advice on supersonic high level flight based on everything they’ve learned on Concorde.

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Yes, thanks, I definitively need some advice on that aspect, and I don’t even mention “riding the shock waves” as this plane did, a thing that always affascinated me! But hopefully I won’t need this to make it flying near to the original plane profile…
But there are also so many other systems that I should simulate (at least to have the instruments alive) that I’ll have to use fantasy more than aeronautical knowledge… :wink:

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check this out

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Good video that illustrates very clearly the history of this plane, I could watch it forever! The plane had a lot of problems during the first flights, but after all it was extraordinarily efficient considering the complexity of the project and how ahead of its time it was. The second prototype had a lot of improvements and without the collision with the F104 it would have flown for a long time and carried a lot of tests; the model 1 did many flights, and showed to be an excellent aircraft even if it was the first prototype ever built.

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