JustFlight have updated their BlackSquare series of aircraft to be compatible with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, along with adding lots of new features, bug fixes, and additional updates to the aircraft series.
Turbine Duke – v1.2
First in the lineup is the Turbine Duke. This is the second update for the aircraft, and it has recieved both new features and sound fixes, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 support.
New Features:
- Added preflight/walk-around interactivity for MSFS 2024 including collision model, clickspots for engine covers, pitot covers, chocks, door handles, baggage doors, etc.
- Headphone simulation has been added to the audio package, which can be triggered by clicking on the pilot’s headphone connectors on the side panel. Headphone cables appear when the headphone simulation is active. The amount of headphone attenuation can be adjusted by scrolling the mouse wheel over the headphone clickspot.
- NEW Magnetic Compass Effects including physics filtering and erratic behavior from onboard magnetic fields. See the “Magnetic Compass Effects” section of this manual for more information.
- Added GTNxi 750 & 650 bezels and improved model switching technique.
- Added support for TDS GTNxi Advanced Crossfill.
- Improved propeller governor simulation for smoother speed adjustments when testing overspeed limiter, and propeller governor failure is now gradual.
- Instant Beta on Touchdown option added to the tablet interface. Due to hardware deadbands, Black Square aircraft do not enter propeller beta range after touchdown if the hardware controller was already in the beta range before touchdown. Enabling this option will apply full beta after touchdown to begin slowing the aircraft without the need to “bump” your hardware throttle.
- Extended tablet show/hide clickspot forward along cockpit wall to be more easily accessible, and consistent with other Black Square aircraft.
- Interior lighting completely retooled for MSFS 2024.
- Added persistence to tablet payload unit switch between sessions.
- Implemented custom toe brake animations and sounds to prevent jittery or looping animations when hardware brakes are used in conjunction with the parking brake.
- Upgraded KNS-81 RNAV, KR87 ADF, and KLN90B push button interactions to conform to latest Black Square standards.
- Added headphone jack highlight to better alert users to the headphone isolation feature.
- Added engine driven fuel pump failure and corresponding engine visualizer behaviors.
- Changed torque calculation source variable for faster torque indication changes.
- Improved fan speed visualization on the cabin visualizer.
- Workaround to fix MSFS 2024 light flare bleed-through.
- Added tablet option to enable exterior registration meshes in MSFS 2024. There is a hard-coded bug in MSFS 2024 that interferes with the ultra-custom dynamic registration system in Black Square aircraft. Sim Update 3 failed to resolve this issue, but a potential fix may be in the works for Sim Update 4. Currently, the dynamic registration may work depending on how the aircraft was loaded.
Bug Fixes:
- Restored missing cockpit precipitation sounds.
- Dynamic oxygen consumption was erroneously using the outside air pressure, rather than the interior cabin pressure to calculate the biological oxygen requirement. Oxygen consumption in a partially pressurized cabin will now be substantially reduced.
- KNS-81 output L:Var values for hardware interfaces only updated when there was a valid VOR signal being received.
- The heater blower now operates when ambient temperatures are greater than 90°F to provide cooling to the radar and any avionics located in the nose baggage compartment.
- The propeller heat circuit breaker would not affect the left propeller heat, although a propeller heat failure triggered from the tablet would work correctly.
- Engine Trend Monitor shaft horsepower and specific fuel could read slightly high when ram air pressures were low.
- Improved gas generator behavior at high power settings.
- The tablet payload screen will now update all data immediately when switching to the tab instead of waiting a second or two.
- The PMS50 GTN 650 was inoperative for the XBOX version of the N2830B paint scheme due to a single character mistake.
- Fixed tiling normal map on turbine instrument backgrounds
- Copilot’s ADF heading card would jitter when reversing directions or crossing 360.
- Copilot’s RNAV localizer glideslope needle sensing was reversed.
- Battery selector switch on the live schematic did not animate.
- During a complete electrical failure, some essential variables would fail to update. This included fundamental variables used to drive Black Square’s advanced engine simulation, sounds, avionics displays, and external hardware or displays.
Piston Duke
We then move over to the Piston Duke, which has also recieved Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Compatibility, along with sound fixes.
New Features:
- Added preflight/walk-around interactivity for MSFS 2024 including collision model, clickspots for engine covers, pitot covers, chocks, door handles, baggage doors, etc.
- Headphone simulation has been added to the audio package, which can be triggered by clicking on the pilot’s headphone connectors on the side panel. Headphone cables appear when the headphone simulation is active. The amount of headphone attenuation can be adjusted by scrolling the mouse wheel over the headphone clickspot.
- NEW Magnetic Compass Effects including physics filtering and erratic behavior from onboard magnetic fields. See the “Magnetic Compass Effects” section of this manual for more information.
- Added NEW oil pump failure & engine seizing physics.
- Added GTNxi 750 & 650 bezels and improved model switching technique.
- Added support for TDS GTNxi Advanced Crossfill.
- Extended tablet show/hide clickspot forward along cockpit wall to be more easily accessible, and consistent with other Black Square aircraft.
- Interior lighting completely retooled for MSFS 2024.
- Added persistence to tablet payload unit switch between sessions.
- Implemented custom toe brake animations and sounds to prevent jittery or looping animations when hardware brakes are used in conjunction with the parking brake.
- Upgraded KNS-81 RNAV, KR87 ADF, and KLN90B push button interactions to conform to latest Black Square standards.
- Added headphone jack highlight to better alert users to the headphone isolation feature.
- Improved fan speed visualization on the cabin visualizer, and increased cooldown time for the combustion air heater visualization.
- Workaround to fix MSFS 2024 light flare bleed-through.
- Added tablet option to enable exterior registration meshes in MSFS 2024. There is a hard-coded bug in MSFS 2024 that interferes with the ultra-custom dynamic registration system in Black Square aircraft. Sim Update 3 failed to resolve this issue, but a potential fix may be in the works for Sim Update 4. Currently, the dynamic registration may work depending on how the aircraft was loaded.
Bug Fixes:
- Restored missing cockpit precipitation sounds.
- Dynamic oxygen consumption was erroneously using the outside air pressure, rather than the interior cabin pressure to calculate the biological oxygen requirement. Oxygen consumption in a partially pressurized cabin will now be substantially reduced.
- KNS-81 output L:Var values for hardware interfaces only updated when there was a valid VOR signal being received.
- The heater blower now operates when ambient temperatures are greater than 90°F to provide cooling to the radar and any avionics located in the nose baggage compartment.
- The left engine’s oil viscosity calculation was mistakenly using the right engine’s combustion flag. This should result in faster oil propagation through the galleries on the left engine after startup.
- The propeller heat circuit breaker would not affect the left propeller heat, although a propeller heat failure triggered from the tablet would work correctly.
- The tablet payload screen will now update all data immediately when switching to the tab instead of waiting a second or two.
- Copilot’s RNAV localizer glideslope needle sensing was reversed.
- The rudder trim pushrod animation may have been reversed before v1.2.
- Fixed sound variables for mixture levers that would not produce sound at the top extent of motion due to Black Square turbocharger logic.
- During a complete electrical failure, some essential variables would fail to update. This included fundamental variables used to drive Black Square’s advanced engine simulation, sounds, avionics displays, and external hardware or displays.
Starship
Starship has also recieved it’s 2nd update, adding Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 support, along with a few new features that are also featured in the above aircraft.
New Features:
- Flight Plan Importing in MSFS 2020 & 2024 is now supported. Flight plans can be imported from the MSFS 2020 World Map (manually created or imported from a file), and they can also be injected from the MSFS 2024 EFB at any time during the flight. Given the uniqueness of Starship’s avionics, these flight plans must be reinterpreted for Starship; therefore, this feature is still considered “experimental”. For more information see the new “Importing a Flight Plan” section of this manual. The best way of importing a flight is via the “Send to Avionics” option on the MSFS 2024 EFB.
- NEW Magnetic Compass Effects including physics filtering and erratic behavior from onboard magnetic fields. See the “Magnetic Compass Effects” section of this manual for more information.
- Implemented ground comm functionality to power the left RTU, COM1 transceiver, and the pilot’s audio circuitry when the battery master switch is in the off position by pressing the “GND COM” push button on the electrical panel.
- Several push buttons and switches, such as the Battery Amps, Aft Fuel Quantity push buttons, and ground ice detector switch will now animate with their respective L:Vars. Also added “L:var_PropGovTestSwitch_Override” to animate the propeller governor test switch with external hardware.
- Added persistence to tablet payload unit switch between sessions.
- Added electrical circuit needed for some hardware to recognize the avionics state.
- Added persistent tablet option to disable auto-filling of payload data on CDU.
- The MFD cursor can now be used to select user-created waypoints from the map, and the MFD map will only display genuine user-created waypoints, as opposed to temporary ones created by importing flight plans.
- Only user-created waypoints will persist between sessions and be displayed on the inspect user waypoints screen, as opposed to temporary ones created by importing flight plans. This should eliminate the “INVALID USER WPT” message on CDU startup.
- The heading bug leading line (dashed magenta) will now appear whenever the selected heading is adjusted for a few seconds, the currently correct behavior in the real aircraft.
- Improved avionics fault detection update speed for MFD Avionics Status Screen display, and added “AVIONICS FAULT” message to CDU.
- Added headphone jack highlight to better alert users to the headphone isolation feature.
- Added L & R LIP HEAT LOW EICAS messages, for when the inertial separators are deployed, but bleed air temperatures are insufficient to heat the induction inlets.
- Windshield wipers now flutter when deployed at high indicated airspeeds, and also become jammed when airframe icing is moderate.
- When the wipers are deployed at high airspeed, the apparent wind will affect the resistance on the motor, slowing down the downward sweep. At high enough airspeeds, the wipers will not return to their parked position until airspeed is lowered.
- Workaround to fix MSFS 2024 light flare bleed-through.
- Added tablet option to enable exterior registration meshes in MSFS 2024. There is a hard-coded bug in MSFS 2024 that interferes with the ultra-custom dynamic registration system in Black Square aircraft. Sim Update 3 failed to resolve this issue, but a potential fix may be in the works for Sim Update 4. Currently, the dynamic registration may work depending on how the aircraft was loaded..
Bug Fixes:
- Payload state saving now appears to work in MSFS 2024 after removing a section of the new “navigation_graph.cfg”. It was previously being overwritten every time you entered/exited the aircraft.
- Changed CDU ADF frequency entry interpretation to allow for setting of frequencies with decimal components below 1,000 kHz.
- CDU messages that were previously acknowledged (white) would remain acknowledged, even when they were triggered subsequently again.
- Circuits on the hot battery bus would not respect battery discharge and failures under some circumstances.
- User waypoint delete function would not update the user waypoint CDU screen.
- Left and right radar tilt did not synchronize when in radar SYNC mode.
- In some circumstances, the localizer and glideslope would not capture when transitioning from autopilot modes other than NAV. This appears to be due to the native sense of localizer-based approach arming. A workaround has been implemented for a seamless experience when using the proper HTML events to control the autopilot.
- Under some circumstances, a runway waypoint could be replaced with the waypoint representing the opposite end of the runway during software back-end flight plan checks.
- Created a more robust check for duplicate waypoints to avoid erroneous WPT IS DUP IN FPLN CDU messages.
- PASS OXYGEN ON EICAS message would not trigger when the passenger oxygen system was deployed.
- LOC DISAGREE EICAS message now requires a localizer frequency to be tuned, as opposed to just a VOR frequency.
- MAIN & STABY DEICE FAIL messages will now extinguish during deicing tests, even if the test button is being held down, as per the procedures handbook.
- Windshield and cabin window icing effect restored on interior model.
- Restored windshield wiper effects in MSFS 2024. Caused by 2024’s different interpretation of the specified RPN update frequency.
- Fixed tiny hole in condition lever dust cover geometry.
- Fixed typo on toilet occupancy placard in aft of cabin.
- Restored airspeed indicator trend arc.
- Restored airspeed indicator blue rectangle (best single engine climb speed) adjustment with pressure altitude.
- Workaround for batteries that disconnect when recharged to exactly their full capacity due to a bug in the simulator.
TBM 850
This is the TBM 850s 4th update, and includes updates to the Altitude Selector, along with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 support. It also contains some general bug fixes.
New Features:
- Added preflight/walk-around interactivity for MSFS 2024 including collision model, clickspots for engine covers, pitot covers, chocks, door handles, baggage doors, etc.
- Overhauled behavior of the KAS 297B to implement vertical speed arming. See the “Bendix/King KAS 297B Altitude Selector” section of this manual for more information.
- NEW Magnetic Compass Effects including physics filtering and erratic behavior from onboard magnetic fields. See the “Magnetic Compass Effects” section of this manual for more information.
- Added GTNxi 750 & 650 bezels and improved model switching technique.
- Added Ear Discomfort Index to the cabin visualizer page of the tablet interface.
- Interior lighting completely retooled for MSFS 2024.
- Added persistence to tablet payload unit switch between sessions.
- Implemented custom toe brake animations and sounds to prevent jittery or looping animations when hardware brakes are used in conjunction with the parking brake.
- Added engine driven fuel pump failure and corresponding engine visualizer behaviors.
- Changed torque calculation source variable for faster torque indication changes.
- Workaround to fix MSFS 2024 light flare bleed-through.
- Added tablet option to enable exterior registration meshes in MSFS 2024. There is a hard-coded bug in MSFS 2024 that interferes with the ultra-custom dynamic registration system in Black Square aircraft. Sim Update 3 failed to resolve this issue, but a potential fix may be in the works for Sim Update 4. Currently, the dynamic registration may work depending on how the aircraft was loaded.
Bug Fixes:
- During a complete electrical failure, some essential variables would fail to update. This included fundamental variables used to drive Black Square’s advanced engine simulation, sounds, avionics displays, and external hardware or displays.
- The air conditioning system would fail to operate on ground power alone, and cooling ability would not be affected by the speed of the cooling turbine.
- The cooling turbine depiction on the cabin visualizer did not respect the bleed air valve positions, and would spin up/down with the gas generator.
- The fuel pressure annunciator would extinguish when the fuel pump was running, even if there was no pressure indicated by the fuel pressure needle. The fuel pump would also still cycle when there was no fuel pressure due to the tanks being empty, or the fuel selector being in the off position.
Velocity XL
The Velocity XL has also recieved it’s 4th update, though this one is much smaller than the others, featuring only 2024 support.
New Features:
- Added preflight/walk-around interactivity for MSFS 2024 including collision model, and clickspots for door handles.
- Added tablet with only payload screen, because the MSFS 2024 EFB does not support canard aircraft payloads. Do not use the default EFB payload page with this aircraft!
- Workaround to fix MSFS 2024 light flare bleed-through.
- Interior lighting completely retooled for MSFS 2024.
And that wraps up the changelogs for these aircraft. Previous owners of these aircraft can download the update via the store you purchased them from. If you do not already own these aircraft, you purchase them at the links below.
Black Square – Turbine Duke ($47.99 – JustFlight)
Black Square – Piston Duke ($47.99 – JustFlight)
Black Square – Starship ($54.99 – JustFlight)
Black Square – TBM 850 ($41.99 – JustFlight)
Black Square – Velocity XL ($27.99 – JustFlight)
