n the early 1950s, a convergence of interests between the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the US military led to the launch of one of the most audacious projects in the history of aviation - the X-15. At that time Scott Crossfield had barely scraped past Mach in the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket and it would be three years before the Bell X-2 set an altitude record of 126,000 feet - yet NACA's specification called for a plane capable of exceeding Mach 6 and flying outside the sensible atmosphere. To many, it seemed an impossible dream.
Proposals were put forward by Bell, Douglas, Republic and North American, the latter operating under the considerable disadvantage of having never built a hypersonic aircraft of any description, unlike Bell and Douglas, both of which had extensive experience in this specialist area. However, the strength of North American's suit was that it had built the F-100 Super Sabre, which was the first operational aircraft to be supersonic in level flight, and it was in the last stages of designing the Mach 3 Navajo cruise missile. As history relates, although North American actually withdrew its tender at one stage, it went on to win the competition and began what would eventually total more than 2,000,000 man-hours of design work on the new plane, first metal being cut in September 1956 on a hull which was to be powered by a 57,000 pound static thrust rocket engine. The rapidity of the design process belies the huge technical challenge the project posed, ranging from choosing an alloy which could withstand the phenomenal heating to which the hull would be subjected, to solving the problems of controlling an aircraft that had to be flown outside the atmosphere. Simulators were extensively used during the hull development, one of the challenges these early systems helped to solve being how the re-entry should be flown, and the use of these systems made a major contribution to safety throughout the entire X-15 flight research program. It is a sobering thought that a minimum spec system for FS2004 is many, many times more powerful than the computers which were used to control those X-15 flights which were among the earliest ventures man made into space.
A total of 199 flights were made in the three X-15 hulls over a period of ten years, as a result of which a grand total of 85 minutes of hypersonic flight was logged, this small-sounding figure resulting from the fact that the aircraft flew for only 8 to 10 minutes after launch from its B52 mother plane, during which time the X-15 would accelerate to twice the speed of a rifle bullet, before returning to base as the world's fastest glider. Achieving those few minutes of each flight meant spending 15 to 40 hours in the simulator, depending on the complexity of the mission; the simulator time allowed the pilot and flight planner to rehearse every second of each flight. This part of the program was an expensive precaution questioned by many, but meant that the X-15 had a remarkable safety record, given the extreme circumstances in which it was conducted - the flights explored the boundaries of physics.
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The X-15 set numerous records in its day, achieving Mach 6.7 and an altitude of 354,200 feet, or 67 miles above the earth. Despite all the precautions, two of the three airframes built suffered serious accidents and the third was destroyed in a fatal spin; but the purpose of the X-15 was not to set records, but to collect experimental data. In addition to the obvious area of high altitude flight research, the program examined human physiological responses during rapid accelerations and during atmospheric re-entry, gathered aerothermal data for the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, and (perhaps its lasting legacy) proved that high-speed glide approaches were entirely feasable given adequate planning. Each Shuttle recovery therefore owes something to the X-15.
In some respects, the X-15 is such a logical project for Flight Simulator that is is surprising that there hasn't (to my knowledge) been a payware addon before now, but there is a very good explanation for this - prior to FSX, the FS world was flat and you couldn't fly higher than 99,999 feet. Yip, folks, it is amazing, but true, Microsoft were flat earthers until only a year or so ago and the FS sky really was a dish full of little holes that the FS gods shone little lights through. I know this to be true because I once slewed a plane as high as I could and it stopped when it hit the limit; out of interest, you could also only fly so far north and south, but it may well be that that limit has been removed in FSX. Up to and including FS2004 we face the flat earth, 99k limit, while in FSX the earth is round and it appears that you can fly as high as you like, although I wouldn't bet the farm on Microsoft having modelled the outer limits of the galaxy in any particular detail. So FSX is a prime candidate for addons that reach a little higher and go a little further, hence the Space Shuttle offering from Captain Sim/Just Flight and the Xtreme Prototypes X-15 packs, which it is my pleasure to review here.
The X-15 packs were developed for FS2004, but are compatible with FSX and, as far as I can tell, work just as well in the new version of the sim as they did in the previous version. Arguably, they work better in FSX than they did in FS2004, because if you install the planes in FS2004, your climbout is doomed to fail with a thud at FL1000, following which you will skid along under the dish until you run out of gas or the little gods get you. By comparison, with the addon installed in FSX, you can fly right out into space and have all the fun of re-entering the atmosphere again, an experience sadly lacking in the default GA planes due to oversights by Cessna and Beech in the horsepower department. Despite this, you are still limited to a maximum speed of Mach 4.65, due to a limitation of the FS physics.
Never having flown into space before, I did the review in FSX. The minimum system spec given in the documentation is Windows 2000/XP or better, a 450 Mhz PC or better, 200 Mb of hard disk space and a 32 Mb video card supporting Directx 9 or later; which is optimistic to say the least. Even with FS2004, I would suggest a 1.8 Ghz processor or better and at least a 64 Mb video card if you want to run the simulation at a decent frame rate. I did the review on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, and a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX running Windows Vista and FSX SP1.
There are three X-15 packs in total. The first is an 81 Mb instant download devoted to the X-15 1, which includes two different versions of the first X-15 to fly: one with the interim XLR11 rocket engine, which developed limited thrust and was used for 21 flights; the other with the definitive XLR99 engine. Each version comes in two different variants, in the case of the XLR11 version differentiated by the cleanliness of the paint scheme, and in the XLR99 version by equipment fit.
The next pack features the X-15A-2, which deserves a bit of explanation. This was a rebuild of the X-15-2, necessary after the plane was badly damaged in an emergency landing on Mud Lake. This landing might have gone okay had it not been for the fact that first the flaps and then one of the skids failed and the plane overturned. The opportunity was taken to modify the hull during the repairs so that it could test various ramjets which were currently in development, but these projects never came to fruition, which is why one of the variants in the addon packs a dummy ramjet. The X-15A-2 pack weighs in at 69 Mb and contains three paints of the X-15 fitted with external fuel tanks, all of which have the XLR99 engine and one of which bears the only non-black scheme of any of the Xtreme packs, simulating an ablative paint which was tested on the plane at one time. The external tanks can be jettisoned when empty and allow longer burn times and higher Mach numbers, the other visible difference between this hull and the first X-15 being that the fuselage was 29 inches longer. The A-2 was the plane that was flown to Mach 6.7, a figure which you cannot, unfortunately, achieve in either FS2004 or FSX.
The first powered flight was made by the X-15-2 in September 1959 using a pair of XLR11 engines; the hull had an exciting life, beginning with a comprehensive engine bay fire before flight testing had even begun. After the first nine flights the engines were replaced with XLR99s and the first flight with these being made in November 1960. For what it is worth the X-15-3 had a similar run of ill-luck, beginning with a ground test in June 1960 of the first XLR99s to arrive, which ended with an explosion that near enough blew the airframe to pieces, the cause being an overpressurised ammonia tank. After an extensive rebuild, the X-15-3 flew again in December '61, the flight test being done by one Neil Armstrong, who some of you may remember going on to even greater things, the aircraft being destroyed when a control system malfunction resulted in it entering a hypersonic spin at 130,000 feet. The program was near its end then and only a further eight missions were flown before the end of 1968.
The final pack is 87 megs and contains two versions each of the X-15-2 and X-15-3, differentiated by equipment fit and paint schemes. Both aircraft are fitted with the XLR99 engines, and as with the other packs, there is a choice between the original 'black' instrument panels and the high contrast panels which replaced them.
Installation posed no problems other than entering the registration key and choosing whether to install into FS2004 or FSX and each pack installs not only the planes but 100 page flight manuals (one in English and one in French), and a ten page FSX flight manual supplement. From here on in, I am going to talk generally about the planes, and any remarks I make can be taken as applying to all the packs, unless I mention specific aircraft models by name.
A quick check showed that the packs only include the planes themselves; you don't get any flights or additional scenery. The X-15s spent their entire lives in the near vicinity of Edwards AFB and were air-launched from specially modified B52s, gliding back to land on the dry lake bed, where they skidded to a halt after a landing run of several thousand yards. There are various suggestions in the manual about how the launch might be simulated, the obvious solution being to slew the X-15 up to around 45,000 feet and start from there and although it is a simple matter to set up a flight like this, it would have been a nice touch had it been included as part of the package. It is also possible to do a normal runway takeoff using the sim, something which couldn't have been done with a real X-15, but which is fun, nonetheless.
The visual model is excellent, especially when you bear in mind that all black aircraft don't render that well in Flight Simulator. Not only do the X-15s look the part, but there is much fine detailing, including panel lines, stencils and gear. I thought I had found a fault when I spotted the gap under the moving section of the tailplane, but a quick check of photos of the real aircraft showed that it was indeed accurate - surprising in a plane of this type, but then again, it was designed only to fly really fast in the thin air of the upper atmosphere. The liveries all appear to be very accurate and while there is only so much you can do with a basically all-black paint scheme, they all look right. If you like variety, the X-15A-2 pack is the one to choose, because this has two of the most colorful schemes. There are all the usual animations, including the differentially-moving horizontal stabiliser, extendable speed brakes, an opening canopy, jettisonable ventral rudder and external propellant tanks on the A-2 and an animated 'eyelid' window on the canopy of the white A-2 (which was the one that went so fast). On top of that, you get dynamic frosting around the LOX tank when it is filled, engine flame and pre-cooling effects to die for, and propellant jettison and various condensation effects. The net effect is that half the time the X-15 is on the ground you can hardly see it for drifting vapor; which brings me to the only peculiar thing about the X-15 in FSX, which is that when you load it for the first time, it is moving fast enough to take off, even with the engine off. A partial solution is to load another plane first, then load the X-15 and then apply the parking brake (not that the X-15 actually had one).
Loading the plane in FSX, the first thing you are liable to notice is the lack of a virtual cockpit (VC). That's right, there isn't one, making the X-15 the first payware addon I have seen in a long while that hasn't had this standard feature. On the one hand, it definitely increases the frame rates, making the addon run smoothly on any system capable of running Flight Simulator, on the other, it denies the user all the ergonomic advantages of running the sim with complete freedom of the point of view. The lack of a VC will be a make or break issue for many users.
By way of compensation, the 2D panel is a fine example of its kind, as long as you can handle the fact that it only appears in the forward view, all the other 2D views being free of any cockpit framing at all. This is, of course, the custom that Microsoft followed until FSX came along, but payware developers normally include these views and it is strange to find one that does not. You do get quite a lot of 2D panel for your money, with eight pop-ups in addition to the main panel, the FS GPS and the compass, so that within the limits of Flight Simulator, it should be possible to fly the X-15 much as it was back in those far off days of the sixties.
The burn and turn brigade are in for a disappointment, because hot-key engine starts are disabled and this condition is reset every time you load a new X-15, so you can't swap birds half way through a flight without a restart. However, there is an option to fly with unlimited fuel, which makes it possible to circle the globe in a remarkably short length of time. The greater part of the manual is comprised of highly illustrated checklists aimed at performing the pre-flight prep of the X-15 and the engine start procedure, which can be simulated in such great detail that it would take a long, long time to become proficient without constant reference to the manual. Real world X-15 pilots were capable of attempting two starts in the ten seconds available to them after the plane had dropped and before an abort had to be declared. Once again, due to the limitations of Flight Simulator, various parts of the X-15's operation cannot be simulated and there are a few switches on the panel that do nothing other than make the user feel better, the reaction control system being a good example. Fortunately for impatient simmers and reviewers, there is a quick-start check list in the appendices that can be worked through at speed, once you are familiar with the panel and the steps involved.
Reasonably full instructions on how to fly representative missions using the X-15 are included, once again backed up by generous amounts of illustration, so even newcomers to Flight Simulator ought to be able to have fun with the plane. I am not going to comment on the flight model other than to say that the X-15s are very fast and very twitchy, but if you can manage the Extra, you shouldn't have any problems with them at all, apart from landing... which is tricky, given that the plane has the gliding angle of a streamlined brick. Real X-15 pilots usually got down close to where they were supposed to land, but unless you are very practiced, you can forget landing on a normal runway and even if you do put the skids on the threshold, the odds of sliding off the far end are high even somewhere with a lot of pavement like Edwards. And do not, under any circumstances, let ATC put you in a hold (-:
There isn't a custom sound set, instead each plane has an alias pointing to the default 737, however the manual hints that one might be in the pipeline.
Verdict? Certainly very different to the normal run of FS addons and seriously good fun to fly, especially if you fancy a trip into near space. Some users may be put off by the lack of a virtual cockpit and custom sound set and the limits that are set on maximum Mach and altitude depending on which version of Flight Simulator you are using. Unless you are an X-15 fanatic, you are unlikely to want all the packs and although in my view the X-15A-2 offers the most variety, the others are just as good and well worth the money. But if you have a penchant for the exotic, or simply have the need for speed, then you have found what you are looking for.
Andrew Herd
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Learn More Here
Montreal, April 15, 2008 - Xtreme Prototypes is proud to announce the release of version 1.1 of its X-15-1 add-on rocket aircraft package for Microsoft® Flight Simulator X and FS2004, featuring fully functional 3D virtual cockpits, an automatic ignition sequence, new X-15 custom sounds, 10 new camera definitions for FSX and 12 saved flights based on actual X-15 missions.
The upgrade is now available online at no additional cost for registered users of version 1.0. The full package is still available at the same competitive price of $34.95 USD (suggested retail price).
Version 1.1 is a major revision of version 1.0 and contains many new features in addition to those found in the original package, including four different virtual cockpits. Each VC contains over 900 parts and nearly 200 animated gauges, switches, levers, light indicators and flight instruments. Like in the advanced 2D instrument panels of the previous version, the virtual cockpits have been meticulously created to conform as closely as possible to the cabin of the real X-15 rocket aircraft. The add-on is compatible with both FSX (SP2 recommended) and FS2004.
The VCs allow a total 3D immersion into the X-15 flying environment and come with new internal spotlights, switches, control sticks, handles and levers with tooltips. Some switches have also been replaced on the 2D panels. Virtually all switches in the VCs and 2D panels are clickable and can be used to simulate nearly every step and procedure required in a typical X-15 mission.
The X-15-1 add-on now features an automatic ignition sequence that enables the rocket engine(s) to be easily started at the touch of a single 'magic' red button. Users can now click this button, sit and relax while watching all the switches and gauges move all by themselves in the cockpit while the auto ignition sequence executes the 'quick-start' procedures described in the manual and ignites the engine(s).
The X-15-1 now has her own custom sound effects for both FSX and FS2004. In addition to the basic FS sound set (igniter idle, rocket engine, flaps and gear), extra sound effects (APUs, turbopump, engine precool/prime and fuel jettison effects) are included in the FSX version.
The X-15-1 add-on has a special feature that renders the VC canopy 'invisible' to give the user the impression that the aircraft is equipped with a 'bubble' glass canopy for more visibility and a spectacular outside view when flying in the VC.
It is now easier to prepare the X-15 for takeoff or simulate an X-15 launch at a high altitude from a 'carrier aircraft' over different dry lakes in the Mojave Desert by loading one of the 12 saved flights included with version 1.1 and clicking the automatic ignition sequence start button. Virtual test pilots can also use one of these flights as a 'template' for a new flight. This has the advantage of presetting all X-15 custom systems to OFF before the flight. The saved flights are described in the manual and are based on historical X-15 flights.
The Xtreme Prototypes X-15-1 rocket aircraft package comes with the original X-15-1 (over 100-page, PDF format) utility flight manual and a 20-page VC manual supplement (English and French), both inspired from the real-world X-15 manuals. The VC supplement is available as a free download on the Xtreme Prototypes web site.
X-15-1 (v1.1) rocket aircraft for Flight Simulator is available for immediate download at: www.xtremeprototypes.com.
Version 1.1 of the X-15-2&3 and X-15A-2 packages are currently into their final stage of development and will be available in the second quarter of 2008. Visit our web site regularly for more information and product availability.
About Xtreme Prototypes
Xtreme Prototypes, incorporated in 2006, is a game studio based in Montreal, Canada, mainly dedicated to developing and marketing high-quality add-on products for Microsoft® Flight Simulator. The company focuses on products with a high educational or historical value and is looking forward to the development of add-on aircraft that have influenced the evolution of flight and can provide an exciting and unique flight simulation experience to our users. Its first series of products, the X-15 for Flight Simulator, brings the excitement of high-speed and high-altitude flight and the challenge of an X-15 research mission to flight simulation enthusiasts and X-15 fans around the world. Xtreme Prototypes recognizes the financial participation of Telefilm Canada, administrator of The Canada New Media Fund funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage, in the development and marketing of its products.