Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

Flying with the Blackbird

Posted by Ted Pollak on May 19th 2008 | Comments Closed
Categories:
Tags:

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

HP’s top of the line gaming computer, the Blackbird 002 LCi, is named after the king of all airplanes, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

Although the airplane is a much higher achievement for mankind, I think the comparison is appropriate because HP and Voodoo took great care and spared no expense with the BB002 design and it is considered by many to be the pinnacle of high-end personal computing.

The accompanying table compares the two machines and summarizes some of the critical elements of their construction and performance.

Because benchmarking an entire system is such a relative science, and processors, software, and components often change, I have chosen to focus on the hard design elements of the Blackbird 002 LCi and the level of gaming and simulation that can be achieved with it.

Figure 1: The HP Blackbird 002 LCi.
(Source: HP/Jon Peddie Research)

The first thing that one notices is the incredible weight of the machine—it’s basically a huge chunk of forged aluminum founded in the fires of an automobile manufacturer’s factory. The FEDEX guy really had his hands full wrestling the box over the curb to my office. This could be conceived as bad; but after man-handling the machine into place I consider it to be good. The sands of time will not affect the Blackbird.

Once firmly on the ground, the chassis is stable—we are talking Rock of Gibraltar stable, you can’t knock it over, you can’t vibrate it, you can’t dent it, but indeed you can draw blood if you run into it. Think about it, how often do you move your PC? Depending on your sense of style the machine could easily be considered some kind of modern art sculpture, one that, if you wanted to, you could stack hundreds of pounds of gear on. Because this thing is not meant to move, it is designed to be accessible—more accessible than any other rig I have experienced, with 95% tool-less modularity and a built-in tool kit for the other 5%.

The easy access invites the user to pop open this beast with regularity. Just like waxing a prized Jaguar, Blackbird owners will want to open that door and hit the electronics with a monthly blast of compressed air. If more serious work is needed the entire door simply lifts off its hinges, it just doesn’t get any better for access.

Area 1 of Figure 1 is the CPU covered with a liquid cooler and surrounded by a heat sink above that. In area 2, are the twin 120mm exhaust fans, an obvious location given that heat rises. Area 3 contains the SLI or Crossfire configured GPU AIBs, also cooled with liquid, this area is compartmentalized as a bulkhead so that the GPU heat is extracted out the back of the machine via the exhaust fans of the cards. Area 4 is the power supply bulkhead, again compartmentalized to manage heat and allow the PS exhaust fan to prevent hot air from infecting the GPU bulkhead. Area 5 contains a five-drive RAID-capable hard disk bay with tool-less pop out of any drive in a matter of seconds. And area 6 is the tool kit. Behind it are two vertical hard media drives.

Table 1: Specifications of the Blackbirds.

What, pray tell, would one use such a machine for? The answer: for anything that requires fast processing which primarily means playing video games and simulations at insanely high resolutions. On the subject of video games, simulation, and software that can bring almost any PC to its knees, we chose to focus on Microsoft Flight Simulator X (SP2 / Acceleration), or simply FSX, for our highlight of BB002’s capabilities. Anything less than a 24-inch monitor pretty much is a waste of this system’s power and HP appropriately supplied a 30-inch LCD for our evaluation.

In an earlier Tech Watch article, we discussed flight sims and their ability to partially educate prospective pilots. We talked to civilian, commercial, and military aviators. We talked to simulation designers and educators. We settled on the fact that a modern home PC flight simulator can supply up to 10% of the knowledge and experience it takes to fly an airplane. Well, for the Blackbird 002 LCi and the setup we are running, we’re going to bump that up to 15%. The reason is perspective and realism. Being able to run 2560x1600 resolution gives prospective pilots a much more realistic view of the cockpit and when you add a Natural Point Track IR head tracking device it gets even better, allowing the pilot such a degree of freedom that one can look all the way over their shoulder to the back seats of the plane, or lean in close to read the fine print on the gauges. (You can read about the head tracking unit at http://www.jonpeddie.com/MtTibTestingLabs/stories/2007/01-08-07.shtml.

The horsepower that Blackbird 002 harnesses also adds to the realism and educational experience because the processors can handle the massive load of procedural software code that programs such as FSX use for such parameters as weather, air and ground traffic, and graphical detail and complexity. There’s a reason they test your eyes for the Air Force, very small visual details can mean the difference between life and death, and you can’t have very small details, clouds and lighting, wind buffeting the plane, thermals, air and ground traffic, and a bunch of other stuff processed into an acceptable frame rate on most machines.

The Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar by Guillemot Corporation (Source: Jon Peddie Research)

On the subject of realism and peripherals deserving of BB002’s high speed USB ports; our friends over at Guillemot Corporation sent us the Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar to make our ride even more authentic. The HOTAS Cougar is an exact replica of the F-16 control stick and throttle and, just like the Blackbird, it is almost entirely constructed of metal and built to last. Cold to the touch and heavy as a bowling ball, if there’s any doubt what the best flight simulation controller is, the USAF helps answer that question because they use the HOTAS Cougar in their simulators. Thrustmaster is also the main sponsor of the Virtual Thunderbirds; a precision simulation flying team. The flight system is, of course, infinitely customizable with an appropriately complex and deep programming package called FOXY which is not too hard to learn.

To round out the package, a good sound system is a must. We used a Dolby powered Denon D-M71DVSXP virtual surround system (expandable into 5.1). It’s pretty amazing what two speakers and a subwoofer can do with some of the Dolby effects. Though the general rule of thumb is the more speakers the better, when surround speaker mounting is an issue, a system that can function excellently with virtual surround is a nice solution. Having a nice sound system, or high end headphones, has got to be part of the deal with a multimedia computer of the caliber of the BB002. The subwoofer of the Denon is adjustable so that the bass response “just” rattles your desk without causing things to slide off of it (or driving your significant other crazy).

What makes FSX so special is the massive community that has embraced the sim. An offshoot of this is an incredible market for mods. AlphaSim from New Zealand probably makes a mint selling aircraft add-ons. They, and others, have found a nice business niche selling incredibly detailed software 3D models of almost every aircraft imaginable that can be loaded into to FSX. I say mint because each aircraft add on can cost just as much as the game itself.

Only 4,000 feet above Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs, the SR-71 is not happy in the thick air. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)

When Jon’s neighbors find out his gaming analyst was responsible for shattering half the windows in Tiburon, there’s going to be hell to pay. (Source: Jon Peddie Research)

The ultimate ground pounding combat flight sim; the venerable LOMAC.
(Source: Jon Peddie Research)

For our review of the HP Blackbird 002 LCi, how could we choose any other aircraft to feature than the, you guessed it, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Modeled in all its sound barrier tripling glory, not only are the “unclassified” flight dynamics and exterior looks accurate, but its incredibly accurate interior virtual cockpit is as well.

So it’s off we go into the wild blue yonder. Over most terrain, the Blackbird 002 LCi was able to run high graphics options and achieve around 40 frames per second at 2560x1600, which is remarkable considering that these settings on an average computer, if they could even get that resolution, would yield something closer to a slow motion slide show. That being said, FSX is able to bring even enthusiast gaming PCs to their knees in dense urban environments like the San Francisco Bay Area where in full daylight the machine often struggled to stay in the double digits frame rate. At night, dawn, and dusk frames increase considerably but in the full shine of daylight the SF Bay is a torture test for even the most elite rig.

A lot of this has to do with the software, as FSX does not really take advantage of the quad core CPU—which is a serious bottleneck for this application (hello Microsoft, are you listening?). If we weren’t such pixelholics we would simply back off the graphic options and urban flying could be smooth as silk. We want to stress that for 99% of the terrain in FSX the BB002 LCi performed flawlessly and also that we haven’t gone to the level of tweaking yet that many users do in the Nvidia control panel to squeeze out extra FPS.

FSX is not the only game in town for flight sims that run great on the Blackbird computer, which proved to be unfortunate for many virtual enemy armored columns and warplanes. Using Lock-On Modern Air Combat, known in the community as LOMAC, and Falcon 4.0 Allied Force we took to the skies in birds of war and really put the hurt on the bad guys. Having the BB002’s graphics horsepower was a joy when the theater was busy and was able to achieve respectable FPS in most situations at 2560x1600.

In conclusion, flying with the Blackbird has been a thrilling experience and we can recommend this rig to enthusiast gamers, high-end computing buffs, and simulation fans.

Epilogue

If you are as big a fan of the SR71 as Jon and I are you’ll probably enjoy reading these stories by the real pilots. Portions of the story have been passed around, this is the most accurate collection we’ve found.