The Rutan Model 61 Long-EZ is a tandem 2-seater homebuilt aircraft designed by Burt Rutan's Rutan Aircraft Factory.
The Long-EZ has a canard layout, with a delta wing and wingtip rudders, and a pusher engine and propelleor. The tricycle landing gear has fixed main wheels with streamlined spats, and a retractable nosewheel. Its predecessor was the VariEze, plans of which were first available to homebuilders in 1976. The prototype, N79RA,of the Long-EZ first flew on June 12, 1979. The Long-EZ was a plans-only kitplane, and several variants of the basic design have surfaced over the years.
The Long-EZ was modern, high performance, custom built long range aircraft featuring the latest advances in aerodynamics and structure to provide good utility, economy, comfort, simplicity and flight safety. The aircraft uses one of two proven certified aircraft engines, the continental O-200 (100 hp) and the Lycoming O-235 (115 hp.) It has an alternator powered electrical system and can be equipped with an electric engine starter. lt’s cockpit layout is designed to compliment pilot work load with throttle, mixture, carb heat, pitch trim and landing controls on the left side console and a side stick controller on the right console. Seating provides correct armrest, lumbar, thigh and headrest support allowing “recliner chair‘ comfort not found in conventional aircraft seats. This allows long, fatigue free flights. The inboard portion of the large wing strakes are used as baggage areas accessible from the front and rear cockpit.
This renditon features:
- Highly detailed internal and external visual models
- 8K high resolution textures
- 4 liveries with customizable registration markings
- Custom sound package (using legacy sound pipeline - WWise sounds not supported at launch)
- Native Microsoft Flight Simulator flight model *
* - at the moment of the initial release, MSFS does not properly support canard planes - the plane may exhibit a behavior that may differ from the real aircraft in extereme conditions
RELEASE NOTES:
Version 1.12
December 15th 2020
- Added sunglasses to pilot figures
- Reintroduced canopy scatches (hopefully done much better this time)
- Changed model name to comply with Microsoft convention
- Increased engine volume when in virtual cockpit
- Minor tweaks to sound spatialization
Version 1.11
November 25th 2020
- Added wing pods: to make them appear, add weight to the Wing Pods station in the fuel and weight settings
- Vastly reduced elevator trim effectiveness following feedback from version 1.10
- Several tweaks to improve the behavior at high speeds
- Reduced rudder effectiveness, especially during takeoff run
- Reduced canopy sound attenuation (considered excessive by some users)
- Added traditional (non-canard) flight model files for users who may prefer those settings (files are in the “backup old flight model” folder)
Version 1.10
November 20h 2020
- Redone flight model to implement new canard settings
- Minor tweaks to engine performance
- Minor tweaks to aircraft maneouverability
- Increased detail and polycount of several cockpit objects
- Retextured cockpit with higher res textures
- Fixed miscellaneous animations and mouse areas
- Added missing lubber line to compass
- Minor improvements to sound package
- Miscellaneous fixes in configuration files
- Cleaned canopy textures
- Replaced library pilot figures with custom models including possibility to remove the pilot figures (beware not to tilt the aircraft!)
- Sound package entirely redone in WWise
Version 1.02
October 16th 2020
- Fixed missing rain effects in the canopy
- Fixed throttle lever animation
- Fixed CoG limits in UI
- Fixed wrong shadowing in Thunderbirds livery
- Added "green checkers" livery
- Added "military camo" livery
Version 1.00
October 10th 2020
INITIAL RELEASE
ПРИМЕЧАНИЯ
Этот продукт оснащен нашей технологией simInstaller и доступен только после покупки через APP
Требования
THIS PRODUCT WILL WORK ONLY WITH MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR
Due to the high-detail model and textures, we suggest to use the Long-EZ on systems that meet or exceed the following requirements:
CPU: 3.0GHz dual core processor or better
GPU: at least 4Gb dedicated memory, Nvidia 960 or better recommended
I love this plane. There may still be a few small flaws, which I think will be fixed later, but it's fantastic. In addition, it is the plane that I will buy the day I win the lottery!
I genuinely want to give this aircraft more stars but in its current state, it feels more like a proof of concept than a complete experience. Comparing it to the payware rendition of this aircraft on the X-Plane store, this one feels very limited. I'd love this to be fitted with a landing light and a much better cockpit light. The current cockpit light bleeds onto the left canard and is extremely bright to the point of being unusable during flight. While I realize the intention of this aircraft is mostly VFR, the Long-EZ was famed for its use in the "Around the world in 80 nights" tour which undoubtedly saw it sporting equipment for night flight. I trust this developer to continue to improve this aircraft, and they have already come a long way in doing so. I suspect the next update will bump it up to 4 stars at least.
Nice model very essential extremely light a little retro' inside,
the good thing of this model is one time that you trim the airplane you can forget the commands, , good turns also very tight in acrobatics, fast in the speed shooting, but a little bit stiff in the tonneau and in the looping in totally is a good plane for have fun
Wow, i REALLY love the aircraft. Well, except for just one little thing... my BRAKES don't work. If i can get those working, i'll give it an EASY 5 stars.
Meh for the price, probably will be great if fixed.
The inside cockpit is quite ugly and below what you should expect for a next-gen plateform, low-poly in places and the textures are pretty bad. The canopy is so dirty it's really distracting and even disgusting, clean it up a bit.
The outside model looks pretty good, I have nothing bad to say about it.
The sounds are pretty bad, you don't even need to have heard the real plane to notice something is wrong with this addon, sounds are missing, the engine sounds is both wrong and of poor quality.
I'm not to complain about the flight model too much since it's a known issue that is going to be fixed when possible and it's mostly Asobo's fault, but it's pretty bad for now.
Something I can't accept now or later is the lack of in-game checklists, I know about the manual but in-game checklists is, in my opinion, the best new feature of this simulator and is great for newcomers. It's something that payware aircrafts developpers should stop ignoring.
The model is beautiful and highly detailed inside and out. Nice selection of liveries. Looks like the rudders aren't working properly. They don't appear to function like the real ones do where the rudders act independently and can be flared in order to air brake when both are applied. The flight model is that of a traditional fixed-wing and not a canard plane. So, that is not accurate as well. It does fly nice and stable though.
No autopilot on this plane and I didn't see a fuel consumption gauge. The animated canopy is a nice touch and the reflections look very good. I can't get the fuel tank selector to work. Gear lever is animated and the gear has some animation to the components. Control surfaces are animated. I couldn't get the mixture to work.
I've never flown a real one but I can't imagine it's so difficult to get this thing to cut power. Even with zero throttle there's thrust and the only way to stop it on the ground is to cut the engine and even then it continues to move, lol. With the engine off the propeller continues to spin for a long time on the ground and braking seems to have very little effect if any, so this makes landings and controlling it on the ground very difficult.
Have to really use the speed brake to be able to land and lose speed. Tweaking the engine and getting the rudders to work properly would really help. Some basic autopilot would be nice but that's understandable as these are homebuilt planes.
I'm a huge fan of the plane though, so it will do for now. Definitely needs to be tweaked and updated though. Thanks for making one of my favorite planes and hope there are some updates in the future to make this my goto.
Awesome little aircraft, flies very well and feels great. With its huge bubble cockpit the unobstructed views out are perfect for VFR flights. Flying in and out of small runways is a blast when employing the airbrake to slow down. IndiaFoxtEcho is a great designer and also listens to the community, am very impressed with the awesome rain effects on the cockpit as your accelerate down the runway. 5 stars and i look forward to the future releases from this software developer. Brilliant stuff!