Introduction We all enjoy different types of virtual flying. The AVSIM 2004 Survey shows what a diverse bunch we are. Some of us like to "kick the tyres and light the fires", jumping into a simple plane and getting up there as quickly as possible. Others enjoy highly-structured flights over long distances using detailed flight plans. And then there are those who enjoy the ultimate in realistic aircraft systems - complex panels with lots of switches that actually click and do something, every gauge telling its own story. Aeroworx Super King Air B200 is designed to please this last group, the systems enthusiasts. It aims to model virtually every system in the real thing. It's the result of a collaboration between Aeroworx and Flight Factory Simulations, with Aeroworx leading the development but FFS building some of the avionics components. However at some point FFS ceased to be part of this project, and Aeroworx then took over full ownership, together with the responsibility for support. There are some elements of the FFS cost-of-ownership modelling that they first demonstrated in their Vans RV-7 (see earlier AVSIM review), however it is not the full implementation found with that plane. Aeroworx have created a very attractive airplane, and achieved much of what they intended in modelling its many and diverse systems. However, its target audience, the systems enthusiasts, are sticklers for realism and 100% accuracy, and may be disappointed by some of the problems that they experience. Aeroworx have committed to a Version 2 fix release for many of these, although there is no firm release date.
Installation & Documentation Installation is by download or CD-ROM. The former involves downloading the Flight1 E-commerce Wrapper, which is rapidly becoming an industry standard. The main download itself is 50Mb, and includes the original plane and a Quick Start Guide, with an additional 5.5Mb for the optional Lufttransport and United nations Liveries. There are separate downloads for the Pilot's Operating Handbook (30Mb), Performance Specifications (4Mb), and Repaint Kit (17Mb).
The installation is completed by starting up the plane within FS2004. At this point you can look around it, but the main instruments don't work, so it isn't really flyable. However, selecting "Aeroworx" - "Register" from the top menu, and then entering the registration key, turns it into a fully-functioning plane. The aircraft menu allows you to choose between "2D Cockpit", "2D Cockpit and VC", and "2D Cockpit, VC and Cabin". The standard livery variants are a Private livery, Lufttransport (A Norwegian Air Ambulance organisation), and United Nations. However the repaint kit will allow the addition of others. When I last looked, the AVSIM Library had 34 repaints, so there's plenty of choice. Documentation consists of Adobe Pilot's Operating Handbook, Performance Specifications and Quick Start Guide. They are all clear and well-illustrated. However what is missing is a Flight Tutorial. This is a complex plane, and the newcomer really does need to be led by the hand through the complexities in each stage of preparation and flight. The POH refers the reader to a Tutorial, but this is still under development. Support is provided via email contact with Aeroworx, and a support forum on the Aeroworx site.
The Aircraft
To quote the Raytheon Aircraft Company's own marketing material, " Soaring the skies in over 100 countries, the Beechcraft King Air B200 represents the perfect balance of performance, luxury, practicality and efficiency. A rare combination that has elevated the King Air B200 to the most successful business aircraft in the world". It is certainly successful, and has outsold every other single model of business aircraft. It can climb to 35,000 feet and land 500 miles away in less than 2 hours, with a good balance of payload, performance and economy. So let's look at the virtual B200 from Aeroworx. In real life, this is a beautiful aircraft to look at. Aeroworx's representation captures this beauty. The detail is very fine, the rivetting and panelling, the intricate construction of the stairway, the various parts of the undercarriage, the wonderful shine on the spinner and taxi lights - it all makes you want to go up and stroke it. It's one of those planes that rewards the purchase of ActiveCamera; you can do a full walk-round inspection, and check all those minute details, just like the real thing. There are some very nice little touches. For example, when you cut the engines and open the door, the two pilots move out of their seats and go and relax at the back of the main cabin! The interior detail of the cabin, while not as fine, is still good enough to be convincing (although the Air Ambulance still has seats, not beds!).
Aeroworx have clearly spent a great deal of effort in modelling all the aircraft systems, and the result is some very complex panels. The 2D panel is in fact 4 separate panels - a Pilot VFR panel; a Pilot IFR (more instruments, less outside view) panel; a Co-pilot (right-hand) VFR panel, and a Co-pilot IFR panel. There are "hot-spots" on the glareshield to switch between these. Not only that, but in the real cockpit, the pilot is more or less surrounded by switches. Therefore the 2D panel has 11 (yes, 11) sub-panels, that are toggled by small icons in the main panel. The result is a lot of switches and dials, most of which actually do something. However they don't always seem to interact correctly. For example, once you've got the engines running, if you don't switch on the inverters, the Gyro compasses should not work. I found that they did in fact work, but the Torque Gauge didn't! This sort of detail is important to systems enthusiasts, because otherwise, what's the point of going through the checklist? Many other switches of course do "click" but as expected don't perform a function in a simulator, for example the one that activates the microphone in the oxygen mask. For avionics junkies, the fit is as comprehensive as you would expect with such a top-of-the-range aircraft, so it includes such "luxuries" as an EADI, an EHSI, weather display, TCAS in addition to a GPS. The graphics of the 2D cockpit are excellent. With subtle colouring and shading, it does look like the real thing. My main criticism is of the icons for the sub-panels. There is a lot of to-and-fro'ing between these panels, so having a fuzzy graphic with the numbers "1" to "11" doesn't really help you to get somewhere quickly; you are forced to point and then pause for the Tooltip to appear. A simple mnemonic, or diagram as in stock FS9 planes, would be better.
The virtual cockpit is equally attractive to look at. Being a very "busy" cockpit, you need to be able to crane your head every which way, and have eyes on top of your kneecaps. I found that ActiveCamera was invaluable in order to look at all the sub-panels and overhead. It is perfectly possible to fly from the VC, as all the switches are clickable. However the GPS does not display in the VC, and and its screen only comes to life when it is clicked on and enlarged in its own window. More critically, some of the "hot-spots" for adjusting dials, for example the Heading Bug, are very small and awkward to locate, particularly when being bounced around in ActiveCamera turbulence. In some cases I found it easier to go back to keyboard shortcuts that I hadn't used since the late-80's.
The sounds are nice, with that refined engine tone between a whistle and a roar that you get with this size of turbo-prop. My only complaint is that the sounds are too quiet. I appreciate that the props spin in front of the pilot, and so will be relatively quiet, but even allowing for that, the prop noise is too refined. The touchdown sound likewise, it flatters any bad landing with its gentle "squelch". There is a co-pilot who calls out things like flap settings, but his voice is far too soft and he needs a course on Assertiveness in the Cockpit. All of these things can of course be altered in the FS9 sound settings, but then they will be wrong for most other planes that you fly. Flying the B200 As I have already said, this is a complex airplane. You can't just jump in, press Ctrl-E, and head off down the runway. You definitely need to "Read The Manual". The Pilot's Operating Handbook is very good, but very detailed. What is missing is a full Flight Tutorial for the virtual flyer. The POH does have real-life checklists, but they have items such as "Secure Chocks", so you're never quite sure what actions you're supposed to perform just in the simulation. Anyway, be assured that there are large number of switches to be set, and dials to be checked, before you can get going. The engine start procedure, in particular, needs careful attention; introduce fuel at the wrong point in the sequence and you get a "hot start", which requires a shut-down and restart of the whole procedure. I have to say that I found a number of issues with the cockpit controls. There appear to be interactions with FS9 commands, for example "L" for Lights, such that switches can end up working the opposite way, i.e. "on" instead of "off" and vice versa. I found this on occasions both with light switches and the Flight Director switch. At night, I could lose the lights in the 2D cockpit, and not be able to turn them back on. Something else which sometimes, but not always, moved the wrong way was the trim wheel. Any real-life pilot seeing that happening will have an instant panic - an autopilot coupled to a reversed elevator system will lead to an early grave. I couldn't put my finger on the cause of these inconsistencies, and there has been some discussion in the support forum, but there appear to be some FS9 interactions and limitations that aren't fully understood. I have never flown a B200, or indeed any plane of that size. I'll therefore confine my comments to overall impressions, or observations that can be checked against published figures. The B200 is a nice plane to taxi, so long as the pilot remembers to have the Condition Lever set to Low Idle. (With the lever incorrectly fully-forward the plane will dash forwards like, as they say in my part of the world, "a rat up a drainpipe"). Acceleration down the runway, rotation, and climb out are as per the published numbers. With suitable adjustments to throttle and propellor settings, the plane will climb easily to its published 35,000 ft ceiling, and settle down for long-range cruise at 150 kts Indicated. While in the cruise I noticed a bug with the GPS; the "plane-up" navigation display is correct, but the "north-up" display shows the plane at some distance fron its correct position. A shame, as I prefer the "north-up" display. Hand-flying the airplane, and trimming it for level flight, carries no surprises (apart from the reverse trim wheel noted above). The behaviour of a turbo-prop engine is modelled well, the engine noise changes (correctly) with the propeller RPM, not the torque. Before using the autopilot, it is a definite case of "Read The Manual", because it will be different from any autopilot you have come across before, in particular its fairly unique "Climb" and "Descent" buttons. The autopilot itself works well, up to the phase of capturing the ILS approach. Now the standard FS9 autopilot has a problem in this area, but when software companies develop bespoke autopilots for their own planes, they should not reproduce these problems. Flying in at a 30 degree angle to the ILS localiser, and with "APPR" set, the plane barely tilts its wings to intercept the heading, and you just know with a dreadful inevitability that it's going to fly right through the beam and out the other side, then to snake its way from side to side before it finally locks on. This is an absolute "no-no" in real life. With so many airports landing on parallel runways, pilots must fly onto the beam first time, not through it, unless they want to lose their licence. It was in the approach and landing that I had most difficulty. Certainly, in the approach, the B200 seemed very "slippery" - even with the propellors fully-fine (and therefore flat to the direction of flight), and flaps down, it took a long time to slow down. This impression was confirmed in the landing phase. I've never flown a B200, but I've seen enough of them land to know that they don't need a huge runway. Indeed the published standard figure is 2845 ft. So I couldn't understand why I was getting the landing performance of a 747 Freighter. I would come in at the published approach speed of 103 kts, gear down, full flaps, yet when I chopped the power, the plane would seem to float forever. When it finally touched town, the combination of reverse thrust and brakes also had a minimal effect. The result was that I was taking over a mile to come to a full stop! The next series of graphics illustrates this. I chose to land on Boston's 7000 ft Runway 27 (the one that heads towards downtown) in zero wind conditions. Look where I finally stopped.
After some correspondence with Aeroworx, we realized that this was because I was landing with the Condition Lever at High Idle instead of Low Idle. Well, I did Read The Manual, but nowhere saw this covered. This will be addressed in Version 2, and is another reason why a Flight Tutorial is needed. The Maintenance Module There is a Maintenance Module, a concept pioneered by FFS in their Van's RV-7, reviewed earlier in AVSIM. This means that, over time, - oil levels drop and have to be topped up - tyres wear out and have to be replaced - engines and propellors have to be replaced when they exceed their hours. However not even the most fanatical simmer with zero home or social life will fly the 10 hours a day, every day, for a year, on this one plane, to see the engine needing replacement. Unlike the RV-7, there is no modelling of a wide range of system faults, nor the cleaning of "dirty livery". Another fundamental difference is that, whilst repairs cost money, there is no screen to show cumulative expenditure and depreciation. I therefore felt a bit like a rich kid spending on Daddy's credit card but never seeing the statement. Overall, given how little had been included in this module, I began to wonder what was the point of having it at all. There is a screen showing accumulated hours by component, reproduced in the accompanying graphic. However, after approximately 22 hours flight, there are a number of errors, as you can see for yourself.
Performance On my set-up I have most sliders to the right, and 100% traffic. On the approach to a very busy Boston Logan shown above, I was getting 14-16 FPS in both VC and 2D cockpits, compared to 22-24 in the stock FS9 King Air 350. Selecting the 2D-Cockpit-only variant, this improved to 18-19 FPS. Given the complexity that is being modelled, this is a reasonable demand on resources. Summary The B200 is a beautiful plane in real life, and a complex one. Aeroworx have captured the visual beauty very well. They have also been ambitious in trying to capture the systems complexity, and are to be commended for that. However the level of problems suggests to me that it was brought to market too early. An extended period of testing, with perhaps more Beta testers, might have ensured a more solid product. Those simmers who like to fly with complex systems, also like those systems to work correctly, and may be disappointed with the current version. Aeroworx have already stated that they are working on a Version 2 set of fixes. These address most of the items that I've mentioned. I have absolutely no doubt that Aeroworx will ultimately deliver a very fine product, because it is already showing much promise. The overall rating reflects the fact that they have aimed for something which is innovative and pushes the boundaries of our pastime, but haven't quite achieved it at this stage. I look forward to seeing this product as it develops, as well as their other products currently under development. *To buy this aircraft package, go to Aeroworx
(Norwegian Airports by Arne Sundsboe and Kjell Arild Bersaas. Boston Logan by George Grimshaw)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
