Alphasim B-58 first flight comments...not exhaustive!

[ejoiner 21]

I have always loved the Hustler. Flew before my time, (just) but such a hot looking jet. I purchased the Alphasim variant and visually its a beauty. Great model. Nice animations. Pretty good afterburner effects. Skins are good but I may make my own... :-) The models are several and well done. Even an exotic TB-58! 2D panel is very good. Pretty much Alphasim standard. The VC nicely matches the 2D and immersion is really very good especially at night. I may tweak the night lighting and the nightlighting in the VC is too bright to me. However the 2D and the VC match so well that flying in 2D is no problem.Where this bird has its problems at least to me is the flight model and the Autopilot. It has a pop up for the autopilot settings, but they dont seem to hold. Also no obvious place on either 2D or VC to turn it on. In fact the VC is missing the NAV/GPS switch entirely, which is on the 2D panel. Also acceleration and decceleration dont seem work smoothly. I dont expect it to fly like a T-38, but the way this aircraft flies doesnt seem right to me. Again, this could be quirks of the real airplane. I know it needs high AOA to land. Also the nozzles on the afterburning J79 engines arent animated...but thats not a huge deal.On the whole, a good airplane. An exotic beauty. However, I think with some good flight model tweakage and some further attention to the autopilot, this one could be great. Alphasim has taken great strides in the last year. The quality has really come up. But this one could use just a bit more technical help. Eye candy it has down!Eric

[ejoiner 21]

I was hoping for some feedback from other users...is my experience similar or different from other folks who purchased this plane?eric

[Bob Scott 7,715]

Regarding the AlphaSim B-58 (at ~$24 US)Visual model: A-Flight Dynamics: Subsonic: B- Supersonic: DPanel: D-I have always had a thing for the Hustler...used to work with a retired USAF colonel that flew it in the old-guard SAC during the Curt LeMay era. I spent the majority of last weekend trying to fix the FDE and the panel.Hard to believe that the same guys that could produce such a nice visual model would sell a panel with FS 5-quality graphics and a pretty seriously challenged FDE. I ran it against the AFSD test suite while troubleshooting, and there is no...zero...mach drag at Mach 1.4 cruise (which it does happily on less than 80% N1 thrust. Clearly the designers need some help with high-speed flight dynamics. The Hustler could do the supersonic mamba, but it sure couldn't cruise that way without afterburner power. Only the SR-71 and the F-22 can do that.I'm still working on it tonight...it's one of those historic planes I just can't let go of. Too bad we couldn't have gotten Milton Shupe to do this one!! CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

[Guest JIMJAM]

I own 8 or more Alpha planes and 4 sceneries. I love the planes because, well lets face it nobody else does em, also they are easy to get into and easy on the frames so you can crank up your settings.My concern is their pricing is going up and the quality is staying the same.Alpha is really cranking then out which is good but Im afraid some are suffering from the cookie cutter approach. At 10-15$, I had the what the heck its not much and bought anything they had that looked interesting.I overlooked any lack of details such as their sterile vr pits cause heck, its not up in the PMDG price range.But as the prices have inched up over $25, all white or gray bland cockpit textures with generic gauges,unreadable huds and sparce clickables just doesnt cut it.The hustler is on my maybe list but $26 is a little steep.Cmon Alpha keep the pricing down or bump up the quality.

[Guest Dakota]

>I own 8 or more Alpha planes and 4 sceneries. I love the>The hustler is on my maybe list but $26 is a little steep.>Cmon Alpha keep the pricing down or bump up the quality.I agree for the type of eye candy, fly out of the box modeling they do, they should not be asking a lot and haven't on most of their planes, but I think for this price or even asking a little more money, you cold expect something similar to what Captainsim did with the F-104 or Aerosoft with the A-10. I would love it if they would simulate most of the systems on the B-58 and have a realistic flight model.

[ejoiner 21]

Bob, I'd be REAL interested in your mods if you should like to share.And I agree on their pricing. I would have bought several more planes but with pricing on some birds at 30 USD or so, I'll save my money for something from Dreamfleet etc. Only so much you can do with a military bird in FS anyway. I think its that they went to Euro based pricing. Fine and dandy, but I wont pay that premium most of the time.Thankseric

[Guest JIMJAM]

Its a shame cause I really like Alphasim.Its a laid back group and come out with planes nobody else will touch. I enjoy jumping in to their planes without hassle and burning up the sky.With over $500 in addons on my hardrive, imo these are 15-20 planes. I usually end up gutting the gauges,replacing them and tweeking the flight model, and replacing alot of sounds that come only with default fs9 ones. Take the B-2.I bought it and enjoy it but for the price having a non functional vc, I mean nothing works, with no backlighing at all doesnt cut it.Besides now I have a 32 inch LCD and the textureless,pieced together grainy pits look really bad.Like I said I like ALPHA and will support them but if they want to be the Walmart of military add ons that fine with me. But if they continue inching their prices up, more like me are not going to accept and start complaining about the much overlooked lack of quality and detail.

[Guest seniorcrown]

Hi Guys,As the modeller involved with this particular project I feel it is my duty to reposnd to your criticisms.First off are the flight dynamics - these flight dynamics believe it or not, are based on the pilots manual - we went through extensive testing to ensure that the dynamics exhibited by the real life Hustler as as close as possible incorporated into our version. A question was posted on our ALphasim forum about engine spool up being exceptionally slow - well this plane is from the late fifties well before quick spooling engines had been developed. I cannot answer the drag question as I did the modelling of this one, and that is our FD guys domain.Having said that, the figures for thrust versus throttle position are by the book, we've checked that. We were concerned that the engines were not spooling quick enough, but thats how it was.The question about the NAV/GPS switch - lets face it - back then there was no GPS, so that question cannot really be posed. The lack of an autopilot switch in the 2D and VC - I went to lengths to try and determine from the manual how the 1950's vintage autopilot worked, and more importantly how it was armed and what functions it actually did.The intake spikes move forward (yes forward!) slowly at Mach 1.42 and above - just like the manual - the jetpipe nozzles are animated - I'm not sure what part you're looking at, but they are definately animated.The main 2d panel isn't my area.I apologise for the 'textureless pieced together grainy bits' - that is my area (in the VC).As for pricing, thats not my area at all, so I cannot comment, except to say that although she looks simple on the outside, there was a lot of hard work put in on the textures, flight model, and general model overall. Remember 5 unique models, 6 textures, sounds, and good flight dynamics. Also the pricing is in New Zealand dollars by default, but you can have the price converted in our shop to whatever you like!!In fact if you head over to www.b-58.com click on contents then flight simulator, you'll see a page that shows our Hustler, and comments by the guys who run the site - one of whom being an ex-crewman of the Hustler. We didn't ask them to do this, but it was certainly a nice surprise : )I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm defending my work and the work of my gracious colleagues, but we feel we have done a worthy job on this one, and am disheartened that no-one reads the check lists to find out how the real aircraft flies compared to our $25 sim version.I do value your comments though and you're most certainly entitled to your opinions - I just wanted to give my point of view. CaptainSim and Alphasim are aiming at completely different markets and I think always will be. Ours are like the Fords of Flight sim.Thank you for reading.David B.

[Guest Alpha_J]

>Regarding the AlphaSim B-58 (at ~$24 US)>>Visual model: A->>Flight Dynamics: >> Subsonic: B-> Supersonic: D>>Panel: D->>I have always had a thing for the Hustler...used to work with>a retired USAF colonel that flew it in the old-guard SAC>during the Curt LeMay era. I spent the majority of last>weekend trying to fix the FDE and the panel.>>Hard to believe that the same guys that could produce such a>nice visual model would sell a panel with FS 5-quality>graphics and a pretty seriously challenged FDE. I ran it>against the AFSD test suite while troubleshooting, and there>is no...zero...mach drag at Mach 1.4 cruise (which it does>happily on less than 80% N1 thrust. Clearly the designers>need some help with high-speed flight dynamics. The Hustler>could do the supersonic mamba, but it sure couldn't cruise>that way without afterburner power. Only the SR-71 and the>F-22 can do that.>>I'm still working on it tonight...it's one of those historic>planes I just can't let go of. Too bad we couldn't have>gotten Milton Shupe to do this one!! >>Cheers>>Bob Scott>ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300>Santiago de ChileHi Bob,Thanks, first off, for buying our plane. We appreciate it. Looks like you are a real-world pilot so the last thing I want to do is start preaching flight dynamics. But there are a few things to point out that might clear up some of your initial impressions. The first thing is that the gage used in the panel, unfortunately, reads out uncorrected N1 RPM rather than corrected N2, which is what the actual gage in the real airplane provides. Uncorrected N1 is going to be the lowest possible reading you can get from the sim and it's not what we wanted there. This will likely be corrected in an update, but anyone who can edit a text file can easily update this by adding the word "corrected" in front of "N1" in the .xml file for each of the four gages, takes only a few minutes.The RPM range for cruising is correct, and the plane is flying in the afterburner power range at Mach 1.4. At this moment I have set up a flight at Mach 1.4 and I have a reading of 89 percent corrected N2. If you have the right gages you can run the same test and see for yourself how all the corrected/uncorrected RPM values stack up. 89 percent is pretty darn close for that Mach number. This aircraft had a throttle setup that was very complex for its time. We tried to duplicate that as closely as possible given the limitations of FS9. There is a range of throttle where the afterburner is active, from "minimum afterburner" to "maximum afterburner". Beyond that is "overspeed". If you look at the throttles after your plane is stabilized at 1.4 Mach and 36,000 feet, you'll see that you're partly into the minimum afterburner region of power. That's just about right. The reason you don't see any afterburner flame effects at this speed is because we created a "maximum" afterburner effect, and since the effect comes on and off like a light switch, we decided not to have that effect kick in until nearly maximum afterburner was reached in the power range. To be more explicit, the afterburner effect will not become visible unless corrected N2 RPM is greater than 94.6 percent.Your comment about the mach drag in the .air file was interesting as well. It is not always necessary to have a value in this lookup table. Many of these lookup tables were created mainly to "fix" or modify airframe performance if the default FDE behavior is inadequate or unsatisfactory. If the performance of the aircraft is within the expected range, and it is in this case, there is no need to have any additional drag in that speed range. The sim is already calculating the many drag and lift coefficients in the background and oftentimes this is very accurate without modification from a lookup table. Many of these tables can in fact be omitted from the flight model in many cases. I assume you concluded there was too little drag because of the low RPM figure, but that RPM figure was wrong because of the gage. (It would be impressive to say we obtained the actual Mach drag chart from Lockheed, buried in a dusty vault somewhere, and used that, but we thought that to be a long shot).To expand on that a bit, what we want out of flight dynamics is a net effect. Yes, it is true that the real aircraft had both additional drag (Mach drag) as well as additional cruise lift at Mach 1.4. However, the net effect of this additional lift and drag is what we are interested in. If they, in effect, cancel one another out then there is little reason to plug numbers into those tables. Many aerodynamic parameters are combined into a "net effect" in Microsoft's FS series, especially so in FS9. It's part of the design strategy of the sim.You have indicated that your initial impression of the flight dynamics is that they are "seriously challenged" but haven't provided any other information than the cruise performance at 1.4 Mach appearing to be off versus engine RPM and afterburner power scheduling, which I've explained above as being the result of a gage error and the way we opted to have the afterburner effect kick in. (The throttle quadrant tells the real story). The fact is that this aircraft flies very much by the book. The B-58 manual was used to create this aircraft, and it matches the performance charts in that manual with a great degree of accuracy. The takeoff roll, landing roll, time to climb, top speeds, and cruising speeds are all accurate. We spent a lot of time ensuring the angles of attack for various aircraft weights and airspeeds were an exact match for the manual for landing approach attitudes, and that the power schedule was an exact match for engine RPM vs. thrust and throttle position. All of this information is in the checklist.Many weeks of work went into this particular flight model and it will take more than a few hours to test and confirm flight performance data. Landings, in particular, are very challenging just as they were in the real plane. We welcome anyone who wants to do performance testing because we know if it's done thoroughly and methodically - the way we created the plane's flight dynamics - the plane will measure up. A quick "seat of the pants" impression is not going to garner much useful information; with a copy of the B-58 manual, a good set of comprehensive flight test gages, a pocket calculator, and a thick notebook and a lot of sharp pencils, a fellow might get some numbers that add up. :)

[ejoiner 21]

Hey, thats all fair enough and am delighted you responded.What I cant find is how to properly engage the autopilot, even if its a period limited unit. I can select the various elements for altitude, speed, etc., but they do not hold. Makes me think there is some "autopilot on/off" switch that Im missing in my look around. A very quick little tutorial on how to activate would be helpful. No concerns over spool up time etc. Im generally happy with the plane. My only real comment is that I cant get "Otto" to do his job!I wonder in real life if this was a "GIB" (Guy in Backseat) thing to activate? Eric

[Guest kickin_chicken]

How's that B47 coming along?

[Guest Alpha_J]

>How's that B47 coming along?It's getting there... :-hah

[Guest Alpha_J]

This autopilot is coded so you have to turn on the master switch to get it to work, it won't automatically come on when you engage the wing leveler, altitude hold, or heading hold. On the main panel in the center, you'll see two icons. One brings up the the autopilot window and the other actually turns on the AP master. They both have the "AP" letters on them, and the one that turns the unit on is yellow. Once it's up and visible you enter the data normally. It should be working fine for you. I have found it is generally easier to assign a few buttons or keys to activate AP master switch, wing leveler, altitude hold, and heading hold. You can also assign a NAV/GPS toggle to a key or button if desired.

[Bob Scott 7,715]

>First off are the flight dynamics - these flight dynamics>believe it or not, are based on the pilots manual - we went>through extensive testing to ensure that the dynamics>exhibited by the real life Hustler as as close as possible>incorporated into our version. A question was posted on our>ALphasim forum about engine spool up being exceptionally slow>- well this plane is from the late fifties well before quick>spooling engines had been developed. No, and double-no! The J-79 engine was also used in the F-104 Starfighter and later in the F-4 Phantom. The engines in this era were low-bypass or no-bypass turbojets that jumped at your command. What you'r suggesting about the engines of this era, and this engine in particular is completely wrong.>The intake spikes move forward (yes forward!) slowly at Mach>1.42 and above - just like the manual - the jetpipe nozzles>are animated - I'm not sure what part you're looking at, but>they are definately animated.The intake spikes are a nice touch. The nozzles do in fact move, although it doesn't appear to be correlated to the afterburner the way it should be.>As for pricing, thats not my area at all, so I cannot comment,>except to say that although she looks simple on the outside,>there was a lot of hard work put in on the textures, flight>model, and general model overall. Remember 5 unique models, 6>textures, sounds, and good flight dynamics. Also the pricing>is in New Zealand dollars by default, but you can have the>price converted in our shop to whatever you like!!No denying there's a lot of good work here, but it's incomplete, and the really awful panels detract from the rest of the good work. Sorry, but the 2D panel looks straight out of a mis-90s version of MSFS.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

[Bob Scott 7,715]

>...the gage used in the>panel, unfortunately, reads out uncorrected N1 RPM rather than>corrected N2, which is what the actual gage in the real>airplane provides....>anyone who can edit a text file can easily update this by>adding the word "corrected" in front of "N1" in the .xml file>for each of the four gages, takes only a few minutes.Noted...but I'm stunned that you could have put in the kind of testing you allude to and not notice that the indicated power settings are more than 10% low in the high-altitude high-speed regimes where this jet flies. As you point out w/r/t the gauges...easy to fix in xml, so why is there no fix already posted on your site?>Your comment about the mach drag in the .air file was>interesting as well. It is not always necessary to have a>value in this lookup table. >Many of these tables can in fact be omitted>from the flight model in many cases. I assume you concluded>there was too little drag because of the low RPM figure, but>that RPM figure was wrong because of the gage. I started looking at the drag figures because of both the low power settings on the gauges, and the low fuel flows...range (unrefueled) of the B-58 was around 3,400nm, but with the low fuel flows I saw I had more than double that.>(It would be>impressive to say we obtained the actual Mach drag chart from>Lockheed, buried in a dusty vault somewhere, and used that,>but we thought that to be a long shot).Yes, it'd be very impressive, given that Lockheed didn't build the B-58!>To expand on that a bit, what we want out of flight dynamics>is a net effect. Yes, it is true that the real aircraft had>both additional drag (Mach drag) as well as additional cruise>lift at Mach 1.4. However, the net effect of this additional>lift and drag is what we are interested in. If they, in>effect, cancel one another out then there is little reason to>plug numbers into those tables. Many aerodynamic parameters>are combined into a "net effect" in Microsoft's FS series,>especially so in FS9. It's part of the design strategy of the>sim.I'm a tiny bit familiar with MSFS FDE design. That said...Lift and drag do not cancel each other. They are forces acting perpendicular to one another...how can one cancel the other? That idea just does not make sense.There is no offset elsewhere in the MSFS flight dynamics to the effects of shock (mach) drag. The real airplane experiences a significant spike in drag as it accelerates through the transonic zone, something reasonably approximated by a realistic entry in the mach drag table. It takes a lot of energy to bust through the brick wall at Mach 1...your FDE does not exhibit this behavior, which is a defining trademark of the supersonic aircraft in its generation.>You have indicated that your initial impression of the flight>dynamics is that they are "seriously challenged" but haven't>provided any other information than the cruise performance at>1.4 Mach appearing to be off versus engine RPM and afterburner>power scheduling, which I've explained above as being the>result of a gage error and the way we opted to have the>afterburner effect kick in. (The throttle quadrant tells the>real story). The gauges have to tell the real story...pilots do not generally eyeball the throttle quad for an indication of power setting. Also, the nozzles should be opening up as the burners light...on the J-79, J-85 etc that's the real indication of burner lightoff.>The fact is that this aircraft flies very much>by the book. The B-58 manual was used to create this aircraft,>and it matches the performance charts in that manual with a>great degree of accuracy. The takeoff roll, landing roll,>time to climb, top speeds, and cruising speeds are all>accurate. We spent a lot of time ensuring the angles of>attack for various aircraft weights and airspeeds were an>exact match for the manual for landing approach attitudes, and>that the power schedule was an exact match for engine RPM vs.>thrust and throttle position. All of this information is in>the checklist.Performance in the subsonic regime is acceptably by-the-book, and I'll grant you that part was non-trivial to do. The supersonic dynamics really aren't there yet. Some of it...like the shock drag issue, are sooooo easy to fix. Synching up throttle, nozzle, and visual effects is another, but a bit more difficult.There's some good work here, but as I noted earlier about the panel, it's incomplete. At the $25 mark, people are going to expect a little more I think.Hope to see you work through these issues and not just dig in and defend the errors.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile