Eaglesoft Cessna Citation X

By Andrew Herd (24 April 2004)

t is a curious fact that business jets have never attracted much attention from Flight Simulator developers. There have been some notable exceptions, not least Yannick Lavigne's freeware Dassault Falcon (which still ranks as one of the best FS addons of all time) and Abacus' Corporate Pilot, but a simple head count suggests that most payware houses have played safe and gone for airliners or the more sophisticated end of the GA market. Part of this is down to tradition - early versions of Flight Simulator put a limit on what could be done, so simulating heavy metal was a good way of making users feel like they were getting plenty of bang for their buch - but I can't help feeling that sheer lack of adventure among developers must have something to do with it. The Learjet is one of the most popular default planes in FS2002/FS2004 and the thousands of downloads that Yannick's Falcon racked up have to be telling us something.

So I guess it wasn't a total surprise when Eaglesoft's Cessna Citation X proved to be a hot download. Judging from the number of repaints that are appearing in the file lists, it looks set to overtake the Lear in the popularity stakes and I guess it is about time we took a look at it.

The Citation X is a real pilot's airplane. For one thing, it will climb to 43,000 feet in 30 minutes at maximum takeoff weight, putting it right up there at the most favourable transcontinental and oceanic crossing flight levels. Not only that, but the plane is certified to fly as high as FL510 - where the fuel burn is minimal and you don't have to worry about other traffic apart from the military. The only snag is that you need a 6000 foot runway to operate it from, but there are plenty of those in Flight Simulator.

The cockpit of the real plane is dominated by five 7 x 8 inch screens displaying data from the Honeywell Primus 2000 autopilot/flight director system, and given that the aircraft can fly so far and so high, dual flight management systems with integrated GPS are fitted as standard. Unlike most business jets, which bring the same feeling of deja vu that motel bedrooms do, the cabin is really different. For a start, you can stand up in it, but on top of that, the cabin is twenty four feet long and every Citation X interior is unique; because part of the deal when you buy one is that you get to specify what kind of furnishings Cessna fit

Cessna are proud of their baby, pointing out that 'the world's fastest business aircraft is also the world's most aerodynamically advanced'. They aren't far off the mark, because even at high-cruise power settings, the Citation X's fuel consumption compares very favorably to other aircraft in its class - and you even get a pressurised and heated baggage compartment, so the gerbils can come too.

The performance figures are accounted for by careful design and power plant choice. At back, Cessna have slung a pair of RR AE-3007C fans derated to 6,764 pounds of thrust to guarantee long-term performance. Range is a shade under 4000 miles, while speeds of Mach 0.92 can be achieved, thanks to an extremely slippery airframe and 37 degrees of wing sweep - more than any other business jet and just enough to ensure that you have to concentrate on approach, because if you allow the airspeed to decay too much, the Citation is unlikely to forgive you. Not only does this plane perform like a small airliner, it has to be flown like one.

Eaglesoft's package is available as a $27.95, 30 Mb download from their website. I tested the package with SR 1.1 installed, which was another 10 megs in size, but has been included as standard in the purchase download from 9th March. No CD version was available at the time of review, but hopefully one will become available before too long. Before you read what is about to follow, I am going to say that this is the most magnificent bizjet sim I have ever seen for FS, but it has some significant flaws.

Installation is copy protected using the Flight1 wrapper system, which negotiates license validity on-line and has proved pretty much trouble free in my experience. After everything was done, I checked out the start menu, to find that a Citation X group had appeared, though it contained no more than an uninstall icon. A search through the FS folders failed to find any manuals, which are available as a free download from Eaglesoft - there is a 2 Mb POH type pdf and a 500 k tutorial available from here. The manuals are thorough, although they appear to have been written by someone who was more interested in how the air conditioning system worked than in flying the plane - you really have to hunt around to find out how all the crucial systems work together.

By default, four different versions of the Citation are installed: deluxe, standard, light and ultralight. The idea behind this is to provide something for everyone, regardless of processor power - in theory, if your PC can run Flight Simulator, there is a version of the Citation X available for it. Sure, some users will be denied the chance to do an inflight tour of the virtual interior, by virtue of not having a punchy enough system, but you can't have everything and I wish more suppliers would do something similar. Captain Simulations started this trend by providing versions of their addons with or without VCs and I am glad to see it catching on.

Some idea of why all these different versions are necessary can be gathered from a discussion of the visual model. In deluxe or standard version, with parking brakes on, external spot view will have 'remove before flight' protective streamers fitted to the airframe and the wheels chocked. Shift-e to open the main door and cones and a red carpet will appear - as shown in the top screenshot. Note the limo in the background. The deluxe version has an animated passenger, who is worth watching at least once, as she does different things in each stage of flight, including checking out the weather at the destination and using her laptop; and there is also an animated galley, which opens as the gear retracts. View the plane from up front in spot view and you will see the pilots looking around, which is neat, though it is one of those things you can only admire for so long. I did most of the review running the standard version, which gave good frame rates - but my 3.0 Ghz Pentium struggled at times trying to run the de luxe version.

Bob Hayes' visual model and textures are excellent, apart from the usual FS problem of matching whites where curvatures change - and everything you would expect to be animated is animated. Quite a few repaints have already appeared, including several from Bill Browning, one of which appears in the screenshot above and a fabulous purple plane from Ed Knapp, which is my current favorite and is shown in the final shot down there at the end of the review.

Flight Dynamics are courtesy of Rob Young, who seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment, and has done his usual thorough job. The larger Cessnas have traditionally handled pretty well - the 412 has almost fighter like responses for a plane of its size and the Citation is no slouch either, so this is an enjoyable sim to fly. It does, however, pay to be cautious of it, because the airframe is built for speed and all those high lift devices on the wing are all saying the same thing, which is 'watch out, I can bite!'. The big problem with swept wings is that they do not provide much warning of low speed instability and within the limits of what Flight Simulator, Rob has simulated this pretty well. That being said, on the whole, the Citation is a pussycat and if you have worked out how to land the Lear, you won't have any problems with this, especially since it has an angle of attack indicator for the hard of flying.

The sound set is by Aaron Swindle and is up to his normal high standard. For once, the developers seem to have resisted the urge to ask for insanely loud clicks attached to panel actions, though they are still noisy enough that the lady kept complaining they upset her concentration.

Moving onto the interior, the panel graphics look great at first sight, but turn out to be the addon's weakest feature, which is a shame, since the gauges functionality (courtesy of Lonny Payne) are pretty much beyond reproach - I just wish Eaglesoft had spent less time on the cabin and more on the cockpit, since most users are unlikely to fly the plane from the back seat, unless they plan on holding hands with herself. Though the main and sub-panels are all handpainted and neatly done, the text is so indistinct that I spent much of the review time squinting at the legends trying to read them - a problem which is compounded by the fact that this is not a sim you can buy and fly without attending to the avionics. You have to be able to read those legends in order to set stuff up; which is not easy on a 19 inch CRT and seriously challenging on a 17 inch LCD. Adjusting radio frequencies was particularly tough and since my vision is good enough for me to hold a Class 2 JAR medical I would contend that my eyesight can't be to blame.

The pop-up panels have a tendency to obscure what you want to be looking at; so for example, the course, heading and altitude are set on the pedestal in the real plane, but when the pedestal is active in the sim, it covers the navigation display, leaving you to use the tiny rose on the PFD to figure out what is going on. However, Eaglesoft have been clever here and a click spot located over the bottom left screw of the EICAS display control panel (that's the oblong unit just above the third glass display from the left) replaces it with a heading/course/altitude selector, which means that you don't have to go near the pedestal except to change frequencies.

You have to know your way around the cockpit, because even taking off requires setting at least 5 degrees of flap and getting the trim within limits if you are not to be driven mad by flashing lights and audio alerts - and without entering fuel weight into the FMC the V speeds are guesswork, but by chance or fortune the FMC happens to be the worst offender where legibility is concerned, at least as far as its keyboard goes. Enough already, but if the Citation is to be truly great, Eaglesoft need to go back and get those graphics fixed.

If I were to make a comparison with existing products, I would say that the Citation is Flight1 Golden Eagle meets Vmax 747-200, which is impressive, given that the developer hasn't been around as long as some. Eaglesoft have hit on the fact that FS2002/FS2004 is really well suited to simulating planes in this class, which have just enough systems to be interesting, without having so many that you have to fly the sim in pause all the time, doing stuff that the flight engineer ought to be looking after. Around 75% of the switches and dials work, the main omissions being no TCAS and an FMC that doesn't simulate VNAV and only does LNAV if a flight plan is loaded (if that is Greek to you, what I am trying to say is the Flight Management Computer can't be used for primary navigation purposes - you either have to load an FS flight plan or fly using radio navigation/headings). The other side of the coin is that Eaglesoft have done a really good job on the start process and firing up the plane from cold and dark is just complicated enough to be interesting without taking so long that it becomes tedious. Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) buffs are going to have to buy this one, because everything is there, right down to bleed valve operation and the aircon isolation switches - as far as I can see, the sim could easily be used to rehearse for checkrides in the real thing.

As I remarked in the intro, the Citation X is a very sophisticated airplane and the cockpit of the sim reflects that, with the forward view dominated by the Primary Flight Display (PFD), Multi-Function Display (MFD), and Engine Instrument and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) - reinforcing the mini-airliner feel. The PFD displays all the usual airspeed and altitude trends, as well as flight director and localiser/glideslope information. The Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI - that's the circle down the bottom of the left hand display, which is the PFD) can be changed from rose to arc mode, and flipped from Nav to GPS using the controls in the grey panel just above the PFD. Once set, V speeds can also be shown and you can display just about any combination of radio nav data. I had occasional problems with font overwrites, but these were rarely persistent and the gauge worked well.

The MFD (second of the big displays from the left) is a complicated beast and I could spend all day describing it, but it includes three timer modes including a very handy countdown. A set of buttons along the bottom of the gauge let you set it up and as long as you remember to engage the V speed 'auto' setting on the far right, the PFD will let you know when to rotate, just like a grown up airliner does.

Last of the big three displays is the EICAS, which displays everything from flap position and fuel flow to warning messages. Warnings are displayed in red, amber, blue or white - anything in red triggers the master warning light on the panel and sounds the alarm. First time this went off I nearly left the house and called the cops, but I got used to it after a while and if you haven't read the manual, there is always the reset button (-:

The radios live on the pedestal and are so sophisticated that the pdf takes five pages to describe how they work. In practice, once you get used to using the Line Select Keys (LSKs) which set up the Radio Management Units (RMUs); these are reasonably straight forward to operate, apart from the fact that the standby frequencies are a little tricky to read when they are selected. The mousing areas for the squawk also take a little getting used to and I would suggest going through the manual and having a play around with this unit before you use it in anger, or much frustration will follow. If you use the PGE menu, you can set up the RMUs to display navigation or engine data, providing opportunities for endless fiddling during the long flights I am sure you will make. There is a standby Com unit in the center of the pedestal and once you have a ground power pickup, this can be used to communicate with ATC even if everything else in the cockpit is switched off - ideal for those quick getaways.

You can just see the FMC at bottom right in the shot above. If you click through to look at the larger shot, it will become clear that the screen font is a little indistinct and the numeric keypad is hard to read, which is a shame, since the unit works well otherwise. The main use for the FMC is to set up the V speeds and to display FS flight plan data, since most of the modes present on the real unit are not implemented.

The virtual cockpit (VC) is a masterpiece that leaves most of the competition in the dust and I was seriously tempted to use it all of the time. Certainly, once the Citation is setup in the climb, or on approach, it makes good sense to use the VC, because all the cockpit functions are easily at hand and frame rates are good. FMC data is easily read - possibly more easily than it is in the 2D cockpit - and the only problem I had was that it takes a bit of zooming around to adjust the radio frequencies, though if you enable all the ATC options in FS2004, there is little need to do so and Eaglesoft provide a file on their website which lets Active Camera users hotkey quickly around a series of different VC viewpoints. With a little bit of adjustment of the point of view, the VC is also the best view for approach and landing. Full marks to Eaglesoft in this department - just take a look at the screenshot below and you will see what I mean. How the developer managed to end up with better graphics in the VC than in the 2D panel is anyone's guess, since it is generally the other way around; although to be fair, Flight Simulator's graphics file format doesn't make it easy to present crisp, high color cockpits, even when they are derived from digital photographs. But since Flight1 and DreamFleet have clearly managed to crack the process, I have high expectations of future Eaglesoft products.

The autopilot seems to be based on the FS default unit and so inherits all the deficiencies of that particular piece of code. At altitude, the Citation had an annoying tendency to fly with one wing slightly low, but when I set up some fairly challenging localiser intercepts, it was happy enough to fly them as long as I allowed enough time for the plane to get established.

I tested the plane flying from back and forth from Aspen to Salt Lake City, which seemed to be exactly the sort of route a Citation X might be used on and provides some great scenery to look at along the way. As usual, I wasn't attempting to find every single bug in the package, or I would get about one review done a year, but I didn't come across any serious problems, which is good, considering what a complex sim this is. Guess the patch must have caught most of them.

My overall impression is that even allowing for the 2D panel definition issues, the Citation is the best FS corporate jet out there and deserves its present popularity. The visual model is great, there is a good range of freeware liveries available, the flight model is excellent and the plane sounds good too. Before you rush out and buy it, make sure you can handle the Microsoft Learjet and the Boeing 737 first, because the Citation is more complex than either of those and represents a serious step up from the other default planes - it is built for long distance, high altitude flying and isn't really suitable for bumming around at low level on short trips. Furthermore, it is not a sim where you can hit ctrl-E and burn off into the far distance with the throttle to the firewall. That being said, simmers who want to take a step closer to reality and who have cut their teeth on packages like the Captain Sim 727 and the Flight1 Meridian shouldn't have any problems with the Citation - I can see it being extremely popular in the virtual airways this summer, and maybe next as well, if the other developers don't wake up to what Eaglesoft are doing here.

Eaglesoft say that the package can be used with Reality-XP gauges and though I didn't try it, I am sure this combination must look a million dollars. There are various mod files available on the developer's website which do everything from alter the tint in the cabin windows to alter the default viewpoint in the VC and if you really want to roll out the red carpet, make sure you download the freeware Eaglesoft FBO file, which adds a clutch of custom sceneries to FS to enhance the corporate feel.

Great package. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I think it is going to have to have an Armchair Aviator's Award, but only on condition they smarten up those panels before 2006. Guess we will now have to take a look at their Beechjet 400A/Hawker XP...

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