Earlier this week, Hot Start and X-Aviation gave a detailed look at their upcoming Challenger 650 for X-Plane 11. As it has been developed to a very high standard, it will fall under the ‘Take Command!’ series from Hot Start and X-Aviation and as a result will ultimately be called Take Command!: Challenger 650. In the post, the teams gave a detailed overview of some of the finer details along with the release date being revealed.
Following an extensive 3-year development cycle, Hot Start has confirmed that the aircraft is almost ready to be in the hands of simmers. During this time, the team has created an authentic recreation the Bombardier Challenger 650. In fact, they claim the “simulation you will experience with this product is to a level of realism never seen before in a consumer-based flight simulator.” What justifies them saying this? Well, the forum post gives some initial detail on why the Take Command!: Challenger 650 will reach this level of realism.
To start, Hot Start says that “nearly every part of the Challenger 650 simulation has been designed from first principles.” This includes “basic laws of physics, such as conservation of energy, momentum, the laws of thermodynamics and much more.” In fact, the team said that every system has been recreated from the ground up and is totally independent of X-Plane’s own platform.
Since the team are talking about system-depth, a range of examples were shared in the forums. In fact, they said that these screens show you have the system works internally and how it responds when you perform specific actions.
The avionics of the aircraft have also been designed with a serious level of depth. “The avionics are of course an extremely faithful custom recreation of the Collins Pro Line 21 Advanced suite. Taking advantage of modern graphical horsepower, we’ve decided to reproduce the visuals down to being able to discern individual pixels on the screens.“
Beyond the system-depth and stuff happening behind the scenes, an extensive amount of work has also gone into the modelling for the cockpit, cabin and externals of the plane. Hot Start said, “3D geometry was used to recreate details such as the downlock assist springs, and even the split pins used to secure safety-critical fasteners in place.”
Despite this detail, there will be a minimal cost to performance as Hot Start takes advantage of X-Plane’s “object-kill” functionality that eliminates objects that would otherwise be invisible. “All in all, the entire visual model contains over 6.2 million triangles and texture detail that is designed to look great even if you were to walk up close to the fuselage. Click on the image below to see it in all its 4k glory.“
Inside the cockpit, the level of detail is just as high, including how the team have created night lighting. “We’ve simulated every lamp individually in the aircraft. Not just every light in the cockpit panels. Everything, including flood lights, exterior service lights, cabin lights. In all, there are over 330 individual lamps simulated and over 500 dynamic light sources placed throughout the aircraft.”
Hot Start Challenger 650 Release Date and Price
The next question is when will the Hot Start Challenger 650 be released? Well, Hot Start answered that question in the forums. You will be able to experience the Take Command!: Challenger 650 on January 7th, 2022.
As for the price, it’s not yet been disclosed exactly how much the Hot Start Take Command!: Challenger 650 will cost at this time. Once we learn that information, we’ll let you know.
More Content to Come from the Hot Start Challenger 650
In the build up to the release, Hot Start will be sharing daily preview streams highlighting various components of the aircraft. These daily videos will run 1-1.5 hours and each will focus on a particular area of the feature set. These will start from January 3rd, giving you plenty of information ahead of the January 7th 2022 release.
You an also learn more about the Take Command!: Challenger 650 over on the forums.
