FlightSim.Com Special Report: Behind the Looking Glass

Behind The Looking Glass - The BeechJet 400A Revealed

Your own BeechJet 400A will take you where you need to go. There's a lot more functionality that lies "underneath" that panel however.

Secrets of the BeechJet 400A - Why NO other flightsim can come close!

Looking Glass Studios is long gone, that's no secret. Copies of Flight Unlimited III can still be found, if you're clever enough to hunt around the shelves of various computer store outlets. The real secret is what I am about to tell you about the BeechJet 400A. Things most of you don't know about, and was never documented. There was simply no time to put it all in the book or online. We were pressured to just finish up the most necessary items, and forget the rest. Luckily, most of the features I designed to go into the BeechJet made it into the final version that you all have. If you're a fan of the FU3 BeechJet, read on! If you have never tried it, nor own a copy of FU3 - go get one! I won't be too modest here. The BeechJet 400A is the finest simulation of a light corporate jet ever built. That includes anything in Microsoft FS or FLY!. Now, I don't mean the system rich environment of FLY! I mean the pure physical stuff. Flying sensations, sounds and "surprises". It's the surprises most of you don't know about, and I am here to reveal them for the first time since FU3 was released and I left Looking Glass, to join FlightSim.Com.

When designing the BeechJet, I spent far more time than "allowed" in developing some really neat features that only diehard simmers could love. In addition, I wanted some really specific BeechJet features to be included. Since I worked more closely with programmers than I did management at Looking Glass, I was able to "slip in" much more than I had originally thought would make it into the final cut. With the help of my friend Steven Tisdale, a real BeechJet pilot, we put in stuff that might be "classified".

The Reverser Mechanism

Few people fly from an outside view, but if you did, you might be surprised at what moves on this puppy!

I wanted you to be able to actually unlock the reversers, then deploy them as done in the real airplane. No more "all in one" F2 commands or something, but something much more interactive. I selected the [*] key as the unlock command. This takes the buckets and opens them. You'll hear them clank open. Now, to activate power in a reverse fashion, you must "pull" the reverser levers back towards you. I was able to simulate this by having you pull the levers back individually by left or right clicking and pulling with your mouse. Or, you could simply add power the traditional way with your throttle device. This will activate the glareshield DEPLOY light. Now, you can have as much reversing power is desired, which normally is full. The vibration and airflow around the buckets will create a speed related rumbling. It can get quite loud. Come out of reverse at 50 kts, and then the deploy light will go out. Your buckets need stowing, via the [*] key again.

Now the question came to me, what happens in the real BeechJet if you deploy reverse and run it up to full while standing still, with the brakes off? You would never do this in real life, and the real BeechJet manual says nothing about this. My friend Steve checked with people he knew who flew the real thing, and no one had an answer. I wanted one. Steve found one through a contact that flew the military version. The military has data on this maneuver, and has performed tests by using reverse on the ground (that's what I understand I believe). I got the data, and actually got our programmers to accurately model the aircraft in reverse, while on the ground, starting from a standing position.

>>>SECRET #1<<< You're can achieve a speed of approximately 70 kts backwards, with the reversers deployed to maximum. Add the brakes, and you will stand on your tail. This will destroy the aircraft! Pretty cool eh? It's all real.

Flameouts!

The real BeechJet 400A has flameout tendencies in heavy rain, turbulence and crosswinds.

>>>SECRET #2<<< The FU3 version produces rapid engine flameouts or failures during flight through moderate to heavy rain (green or yellow on the radar unit), severe turbulence (so in a thunderstorm, you'll get that and the rain!) and crosswinds on the runway! Wow! That's a lot of things to keep track of. So, to protect you against surprise engine failures (so many people who were testing in our office kept telling me something's wrong with the jet. They kept loosing their engines, and kept telling me it's defective!) Little did they know. How many of you simmers knew this, or experienced engine failures? Here's what you need to prevent this from occurring:

Run your ignition during areas of moderate or heavier rain, expected turbulence, and any crosswinds you're going to hit on a landing or takeoff.
Run your boost pumps during actual turbulence

Power drain

The real BeechJet's engine performance is affected by turning on the ignition and boost pumps.

>>>SECRET #3<<< The FU3 BeechJet will experience a power surge and steady rpm increase when the anti-icing switch is activated, or a power decrease when the boost pumps are used. You'll notice this each and every time you activate either system. Programming this in took only minutes by our team. So, if on takeoff, you activate the anti-icing, be sure to readjust your power to keep it from redlining. Retard power slightly when anti-icing is activated. Of course, using boost pumps and anti-icing together cancels each other out, so you'll see a steady power setting.

Icing

All aircraft are susceptible to in-flight icing, and the FU3 BeechJet is no exception. While you will not see ice accumulate on the airplane (a feature I pushed hard for, and almost got artists to make separate bitmaps for an iced-over wing, windshield etc., but it was canceled by management), you will feel the physical effects.

>>>SECRET #4<<< The BeechJet will experience decreasing performance when flying through clouds when outside air temperatures are under 35F or 3C. You will have to turn on your anti-icing switch which will completely control the pitot heats, hot wing plates and engine anti-icing. All you have to do is run this switch when in icing conditions. If you have not activated this switch and have been "picking up" ice for a while, then it will take a few moments to restore performance as ice is melted away. Again, you'll get a surge of power when this is selected.

Real Weather Radar

FLY!'s radar detects where clouds are. Not precipitation. X-Plane has weather radar, but is quite vague. It's not very exact. Microsoft's simulator has no radar. Will it ever?

>>>SECRET #5<<< The BeechJet radar is the only pure weather radar that exists, where actual precipitation levels and locations are pinpointed and updated in live time. FU3's weather system allows for precise interpretation of the live weather model. As rain or snow activity changes, you'll see it accurately plotted on the radar. Snow will hardly ever be more than green, yet convective precipitation will show up yellow and red. You will know when you are about to enter precipitation and precisely when you hit the green edge, it will start getting wet outside. In using the radar, be sure to steer clear of all areas greater then green. Otherwise you'll be risking the aircraft and your life!

An additional feature is the stormscope lightning detection feature. Every flash or stroke will be announced at the same instant, and displayed over the radar image as a florescent pink plus symbol.

Rapid Descents

The real BeechJet 400A cannot be subjected to a dive greater than 7000 fpm, without the engines being flamed out. This was another physical property we got from my friend's military connections.

>>>SECRET #6<<< The BeechJet in Flight III will experience engine failure / flameout at vertical speeds greater than 7000 fpm. The difference between this and regular flameouts is that you should never be flying this aircraft at such vertical speeds going downhill. I found this a great feature to include, to punish those heavy-handed, sloppy, or hot-dogging flyers that have no business torturing the airplane. This caused many disgruntled remarks from our in-house team of beta testers that once again, were not dedicated flightsimmers. Most found their engines failing all the time on descents! There was no sympathy for them. This was another feature I got in, that most people would have rather cut out. Ha!

To remedy the flameouts, you'll have to decrease rate of descent and re-light the engines. Your ignition can not keep up in such conditions and will not be effective in preventing engine failure.

Various Rumbles

One of my big pet peeves about today's lot of great flightsims is the lack of quality sound effects. FU3 contains some neat extra sound effects that other sims don't bother modeling, and you may not have known about. The real jet has spoileron "boards" that control the roll. There are no classic ailerons. They are narrow long strips meshed into the top wing surface. Since they are also the speed brakes, they will extend together from each wing when spoiler action is needed. This creates a disruption of airflow each time they are used. This is most noticable when full spoilers are used. However, even abrupt turns or steep turns will create a distinctive rumbling sound from inside the cabin.

>>>SECRET #7<<< You'll hear a rumbling sound coming from the spoilerons every time you turn the aircraft or use speedbrakes, and the sound will be louder depending on how much input is given to them. If you're not hearing this, make sure your special effects slider is all the way up. Also, make sure your speaker bass is fairly high.

Landing Lights

Unstable sky overhead - the autopilot and weather radar are being used, while I took this snapshot.
Real landing lights exist on all real airplanes. Both FLY! and FS don't have any. None of the programmers on the FU3 team that were on the FU2 team, knew how to program landing lights. Not only did they do it on their first try, they made the best night lighting landing light effects I've ever seen. It's only fair to say that X-Plane recently came up with lights even better. This is not really a secret. You can clearly see the lights. However, the BeechJet we modeled has pulsing lights for better recognition. You can activate them using the overhead panel or the [shift-l] command. As an added bonus, you can control each lens individually and on the aircraft with taxi lights, each or both taxi lights separately. All lights not on the panel of the other aircraft are "hidden" keyboard commands. All FU3 aircraft have a complete set of landing and taxi lights specific to each airplane.

>>>SECRET #8<<< All the airplanes have landing lights and pulsing lights. I know, that's not exactly a feature just the BeechJet has, but I had to throw it in. You can activate the landing lights on all the FU3 airplanes, even the old ones using this feature. Even without a panel switch, you have landing/pulse lights on all the aircraft.

Autopilot

I may once again mention that the "other" flightsims have very poorly designed autopilots. My goal was to have a realistic autopilot that reacted smoothly and not so violently sloppy we've all come used to in FS. The Looking Glass programmers had never done an autopilot before and I was a little leery about how it might turn out. Some of them looked at me very puzzled when I tried to explain all the little things it's supposed to do. Two weeks later I was stunned as the BeechJet autopilot was in operation! It was the smoothest, easiest and most user-friendly system I've ever come across. I designed it that way, but was not ready for it to work exactly as I had planned. Our programmers made it all come to life. Engaging any modes at any time will not give you the unpredictable results found on other sims. Why can not Microsoft nor TRI program an autopilot that will react slowly and steadily? Our people did it in two weeks with no previous knowledge to go on. The overall look and feel of this autopilot is similar but not exact to the real -400A. I wanted to develop an autopilot in our time restriction that would be easy for all users, novice and expert. In addition, it's "hidden" feature is that all functions touchable onscreen, can be done exactly the same way using the keyboard.

>>>SECRET #9<<< The BeechJet autopilot is built in to all the FU3 aircraft! I can't remember if this is documented or not, but the autopilot exists on all Flight III aircraft!. Even though it's not mounted in the panel, the functions are "hidden" using the keyboard. From the Trainer to the Fokker, the autopilot system is live and ready to use. Surprise, surprise! So, next time you're struggling in the slop of a sunny summer day in your Trainer, just hit [ALT-A] and [ALT-H]. All the other autopilot functions are listed in your manual.

I think that just about does it for my BeechJet secrets untold. Most everything else is documented in the manual, and very well in the extensive readme's. Since I have the manuals at hand, and most of the actual performance numbers in my mind, I can promise you the performance you get is almost perfectly accurate. Feel free to ask me questions on the -400A. My friend Steve whom flew the BeechJet, swears by its accuracy. One of my favorite things, is in testing, I could plan a cruise at various flight levels, and compare how accurate the N1 settings, mach speed, true airspeed and fuel flows were. At all altitudes above FL300, you'll get within 1%, the exact "numbers" in all aspects of power, weight, air density and outside temperature. If you had a BeechJet manual, you could use it!

Full panel view, showing everything you'll ever need.
In developing the physics of the BeechJet, there are some other things I wanted to mention. In order to achieve steady, solid, under-twitchy controls, we had to cut out some of the sensitivity of the ground steering. This can make turning sharply a bear. I would recommend you use differential brakes as well as separate engine power to aid your turns. However, runway sensitivity is not a problem now, a compromise I had to make. You can adjust these settings though the config files, and it's all explained in the readme. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're daring...

Stall characteristics may be slightly mushy or less snappy. Again, stability feel was more important here. Flight III will never be oversensitive by default, especially with a good yoke or control set.

In conclusion, I hope you'll agree with me that Flight Unlimited III is a real BeechJet flight simulator. It also simulates other fun airplanes, but most of the design effort was poured into the BeechJet. In a world where corporate jets have not been simulated much, I hope you'll pick up FU3 just for this one airplane. You'll be thrilled with it's interactivity, flight quality, and realistic visual feel. It's a lot of fun! I'd love to hear about your experiences as well.

Happy flying!

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