Not finding anything to study on the Longitude? For those of you who want to venture out of NORM, or are just curious as to how deep the plane simulation goes, here's a two-hour deep dive into just the aircraft main and support systems, from the hydraulics, to the fuel system, to the pneumatics, and more.

Not anything officially from us at WT, just something I put together as an evenings side project. Hope it gives folks some insight!

 

Yeah, some people like to brush off default aircraft without even trying them, which is a shame.

Yeah I'm kinda surprised people don't know how incredibly in depth the Longitude is.  It's definitely the best default aircraft of the entire sim, or any sim.

The most deeply simulated default aircraft ever in any sim, and definitely gives payware high fidelity aircraft a run for their money.

Looking forward to watching this deep-dive (2 hours!) properly when I get some time, and also looking forward to more deeply simulated default birds in MSFS 2024 🙂

 

I love how in depth this aircraft is and it fits perfectly with how I like to operate and the type of flying I do. BUT, the biggest let down for me is the sounds, please can we have an improved soundpack for it?

6 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

Yeah, some people like to brush off default aircraft without even trying them, which is a shame.

I've been answering a LOT of "I just got the sim, what planes should I buy..." questions lately with, "Just fly what's already there."

Thanks for the link! I've been wanting to study this plane for a long time.

My favorit jet 👍

A lot don't know about the provided manuals for all the default aircraft either, at: https://www.flightsimulator.com/aircraft-manuals/

The Citation Longitude manual is a rather substantial one at that, 170+ pager: https://flightsimulator.azureedge.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Cessna-Citation-CJ4-User-Guide-v1.pdf
 

Edited June 19, 20241 yr by lwt1971

Just now I jumped into XP12 again ... Bummer !!!

Matt is a bad boy !!!! 😜

Edited June 19, 20241 yr by jcomm

10 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

A lot don't know about the provided manuals for all the default aircraft either, at: https://www.flightsimulator.com/aircraft-manuals/

The Citation Longitude manual is a rather substantial one at that, 170+ pager: https://flightsimulator.azureedge.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Cessna-Citation-CJ4-User-Guide-v1.pdf
 

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/cessna-citation-model-700-longitude-operators-guide/562558

 

Magnificent.

Should not really be possible with a default airplane. MSFS is so far ahead in that regard it's not even funny.
10 years ago this would be payware and cost 69.99 USD (if it was for P3D), but look what boundaries MS/WT has pushed.

Kudos to you and your team, Matt.

3 hours ago, SAS443 said:

Magnificent.

Should not really be possible with a default airplane. MSFS is so far ahead in that regard it's not even funny.
10 years ago this would be payware and cost 69.99 USD (if it was for P3D), but look what boundaries MS/WT has pushed.

Kudos to you and your team, Matt.

The default aircraft in 2024 have said to be better than the default 2020 aircraft.

In a lot of ways the Longitude, in the sim, is a victim of its truly pilot-focused design: simmers want to feel the complexity of the plane directly in the difficulty of the operation, whereas pilots want something that reduces workload and just goes.

The Longitude is so easy to operate that nobody really suspects just how much is going on under the hood with the systems. Never mind the G5000, which could be another 2-3 hour video alone, but the systems themselves are doing a ton of heavy lifting. There's so much to it there is stuff I keep discovering that I forgot to include in the video, like:

- The brakes and wheel system have an automatic spin-down function: the brakes are automatically applied when you pull up the gear to stop wheel spin. If you're looking at a synoptic with brakes readout, you can see the brakes applied, and if you're in external view you'll see the wheels spin down before the gear enters the wheel well.

- The whole dry-motor operation, which I say in the video I'm going to get back to and then I completely forgot. There are some engine shutdown time timers in the plane, and if you have shutdown the engines 15-45 minutes ago, the fan blades may have cooled in an asymmetrical way that a start could cause engine wear, so the plane suggests you dry-motor the engine (CAS message). This cools the fan blades more evenly. Once you complete the dry-motoring process (hold the starter button with it on STOP, which engages the air starter only), then the plane resets the whole dry-motoring timers and clears the message.

- LP/HP bleed valve switching: when at idle on the ground, the engines actually source bleed air from the high-pressure section of the turbine. However, once you advance the throttles enough, the system switches bleed air to source from the low-pressure section. This isn't indicated on the ECS synoptic, but is shown in the anti-ice one: you can see the HP/LP valve flip back and forth as you go from idle to advanced throttle and vice-versa.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting! The team had a blast working with the manufacturer engineering team to make sure all of these things ended up in the plane, it was a ton of fun.

Edited June 19, 20241 yr by MattNischan

34 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

In a lot of ways the Longitude, in the sim, is a victim of its truly pilot-focused design: simmers want to feel the complexity of the plane directly in the difficulty of the operation, whereas pilots want something that reduces workload and just goes.
.....
I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting! The team had a blast working with the manufacturer engineering team to make sure all of these things ended up in the plane, it was a ton of fun.

Matt, feel totally free to tell us which other/new default aircraft are receiving similar treatment in MSFS 2024 🙂