top speed

You mean display the true speed? In the realism box there is an option to display true speed or indicated. Indicated is more realistic because that accounts for the pressure difference at altitude. The airspeed indicator realize on a pitot tube which get's it's airspeed reading's from ram air or air going directly into the pitot tube from the aircraft movement. The higher you go the less air there is so naturally the pitot tube would pick up smaller reading and give you an indicated 300knts while you are in fact going 440 knots true.

jdernehl wrote:

Could someone tell me why speed is limited in all FS games? Is there a patch that lets jet actually fly at true speeds?

Thanks.

There is no speed limit in FSX or FS9 that I know of.

Thank you for the replies.

I guess it just seems that certain jets like the SR-71 should be able to cruise faster than 900 Kts.

900kts is FAST. What's your altitude? Check out the mach number...

Traches wrote:

900kts is FAST.

Not for the SR-71 it ain't Bob. Have a look at this:

The SR-71 remained the world's fastest and highest-flying operational manned aircraft throughout its career. From an altitude of 80,000 ft (24 km), it could survey 100,000 square miles per hour (72 square kilometers per second) of the Earth's surface. In addition, it was accurate enough to take a picture of a car's license plate from this altitude. On 28 July 1976, an SR-71 broke the world record for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.1669 mph...

http://pacificcoastairmuseum.org/2002Site/aircraftPCAM/SR_71/SR71_History.asp

But as you point out, you gotta have the altitude to get to the speed. Now the 6 million $$$ question...

...apparently there's a limit in FS9 regarding the altitude ANY a/c can fly. ...apparently those limitations have been overcome in FSX (think FSX Space Shuttle missions). However, if there is any payware FSX SR-71 available, I have grave suspicions as to its origin and nativity. In a word, no payware dev would spend resources to develop half decent flight dynamics in the hope to sell 500-1000 of their product considering that the SR-71 and other exotic birds belong to a niche market.

I don't think it's necessary to even mention the ostensibly "updated for FSX" freeware attempts.