bennz wrote:Fantastic response Sean, Much appreciate the comprehensive description and details of the plane.
I would certainly be interested to have a look at your 90's cockpit setup as well as any tweaks or modifications you might have for this aircraft. But I am hoping to manage to sort out the issue with VC first, as it was quite annoying.
So if the pressurisation system is not simulated, then I guess there is no need to be worried about having problems with doors not getting open due to pressure difference and few other consequences which we have in the M version on fs9?
How are the flying characteristics? The reason I was purely using M was the fact that many mentioned the flying of M was more realistic than B2 . And the added simulated systems of course, specially the effect of the weather on engines and their behaviour.
Cheers
Luckily that VC issue should be a pretty quick "fix" since it just involves right clicking. You'll need to do it each time you start a fresh flight, but it just takes a second. A consequence of extremely complex gauge initialization...
I'll post a '90s cockpit shot within the next couple of hours.
Correct on the fact that there really isn't' much in the way of environmental consequences in the B-2. You still need to obviously watch the complex systems, but it's not
quite as involved as the M. (though still many orders of magnitude more than people are used to!)
It's been so long since I've used the M that I forgot about those neat environmental features. It was particularly nice having the brake efficiency go down in poor weather.
I actually think FSX itself takes this into effect somewhat now....so do watch your landings on wet runways, because to me they do seem to be a bit longer...but it could be my imagination.
The flying characteristics seem excellent to me and just like old times. As with the M, the B-2 uses that same infamous "joystick utility" that measures hardware control forces within the addon aircraft itself, and requires "disabling" your controls in the main FSX program, either through the menu system before a flight, or you can assign a key press (mine is Shift+K), and programming your controls through the joystick utilty when the aircraft is loaded. The ability of this addon to use it's own joystick system allows for more realistic control and a better simulated feeling of an aircraft this size.
I have a config set for a Saitek Pro Flight system with one yoke, one three-lever throttle quadrant, and the Saitek rudder pedals if you have the same hardware.
As far as "the numbers" go when flying. Everything still seems to be as good as it was, particularly since the latest update when some overpower issues on the ground were addressed (that was annoying for a while...the parking brake was ineffective when the engines were running, and you needed zero thrust input to get moving pretty quickly on the ground.....it's been fixed.)
The ship still requires around 82% on the throttles with full flaps on final...all of the speeds seem to be accurate in all regimes of flight, etc. Basically....it's by the book.
Other features off the top of my head:
The external Load Manager program is included so you can load up your aircraft and write the new weights to the aircraft.cfg before flight. It'll also tell you how much fuel to put in based off of trip length in kilometers. (Need to input fuel load within FSX though prior to flight).
Also, NCalc works and can export plans to the navigation assistant so you can use the NVU system, or you can export to the INS. One note: I use Plan-G to create flight plans externally, because NCalc still requires that you use FS2004 format flight plan files. Still exports to the FSX aircraft just fine though.
The navigation assistant works like a charm when you load an NCalc plan, and navigation itself (speaking of the 70's version) is just like you may remember.
The '90s panel is nearly a Tu-154M panel essentially, since it includes the modern navigation allowances.
So, overall....very complex, not quite as complex as the M, but just as complex as pretty much any other classic aircraft that you are considering right now!
EDIT: Also....FS9 era repaints work!!!!!!!!!!!!! (with the addition of an appropriate texture.cfg in the addon texture's folder, and of course adding an entry to the aircraft.cfg)
Too much realism in simulation of geared truboprop. Who would have thought that? 
