767 Pilot In Command

By Andrew Herd (4 March 2001)

ne of the best things about having played around with FS2000 for as long as I have (yeah, OK, I am over 40, there have been some disadvantages too), is that I have been able to enjoy a steady improvement in the quality and range of add-ons available for this wonderful package. As Flight Simulator has become more sophisticated, so have the panels, and old friends have kept coming back in newer and better versions. The first I saw of this particular add-on was version two, which was adapted from Antonio Ambrosio's 777 panel. A great deal of development has taken place since then; the last freeware release was version 7, and now we have the first commercial version in Wilco's 767 Pilot in Command. Take my word for it, there is nothing quite like this package available anywhere. Your money gets you no less than thirteen different liveries and the best panel I have ever seen.

The package comes on a CD-ROM with a slim paper manual that includes just enough information to get the software installed. Hardly any user intervention is required beyond entering the product key, selecting a language, and choosing which aircraft liveries to install. Four liveries are installed by default and although it is beyond the scope of this review, I can assure you that the flight model is extremely accurate.

Once the package is installed FS2000 can be started straight away. Although a very useful "quick tips" window appears each time the aircraft is loaded, my suggestion at this point is that you browse the CD and print off all the manuals in the documents folder at this point (if you want to read the main manuals before buying the product they are available on Wilco's web site). Be warned that the two main manuals total 224 pages in the European A4 format; they are packed with useful detail, rather than endless photocopied performance charts. The Flight Management Computer manual alone runs to 108 pages, and there are several checklist files. However, if like me, you can't contain your excitement, the aircraft does load by default with the panel lit and the engines running, so it is possible to do a blast round on a quick circuit to get the feel of this fabulous plane before you get down to serious study.

I had to make a conscious effort not to fill this review with superlatives, because this is quite simply the best, most complete, most reliable, bug-free panel I have seen to date. Take a look at the screen shot opposite this paragraph - looks pretty ordinary, doesn't it? That, at least, was my first impression, but each time I fly with this panel, I discover something new.

OK, enough of these generalities. What is this panel about? In a nutshell, the easiest thing to say about it is that it is an almost perfect simulation of the functions of a real 767 cockpit. Take, for example, the functions of the inertial reference system (IRS). Although the panel loads by default with the IRS initialised, my first encounter with it was when I discovered that I had to turn the inertial reference units (IRUs) on to begin preflighting the FMC (flight management computer) from cold in order to access all the panel display functions. No big deal, the IRUs only take two minutes to "warm up" compared to ten on the real aircraft. But the IRS operation has been so well simulated that the EHSI (electronic horizontal situation indicator) will show what are known as "map shifts" on long flights over water. Why? Because in a real 767, the IRUs tend to "drift" and the FMC continually checks the aircraft's actual position by polling VORs, and these aren't available in mid-ocean. So this is how the FMC behaves in the PIC 767. A detail, maybe, but it is the way all functions of the real 767 cockpit have been so carefully simulated that makes this panel the triumph that it is.

Having initialised the aircraft position on the FMC (four pages on this in the manual), the next stage is to complete the rest of the pre-flight procedure for the instrument. This follows exactly the same method as in the real 767 and of all the FMCs I have had an opportunity to review, it has to be said that this is the most complete simulation I have ever seen. All the FMC modes are correctly modelled and it is possible to do some extremely fancy programming if you understand this instrument correctly. Given the complexity of the original unit, the team members who programmed this part of the sim, deserve respect. Both jet and victor airways can be programmed into the unit, and every function is faithfully duplicated, with the exception of wind modelling; the ATC button; the Fix page, which is being worked on right now; and SIDs and STARs, which are lacking in the release version, but are available as a freeware upgrade (although using this disables the ability of the FMC to use realistic transition procedures). The development team are working on a 100% realistic database of SIDS, STARS and approach procedures, with complete transitions available. When this work is completed, it should not be possible to distinguish between the simulated FMC DEP/ARR page and one found in the real plane. The FMC is so good I was able to use Bill Bulfer's FMC User's Guide to program it.

Mindful of the problems of managing a multiple panel sim, the team have loaded the package with hot keys and hot spots. The hot spots lurk unobtrusively at the bottom of the main panel, while simple left hand hot key combinations will pop up any of the panels at a moment's notice. Readers who have piled up the Phoenix 747 at the end of the runway for lack of an easy way to chop the autothrottle will be cheered to hear that hitting shift-R in the 767 sim puts you back in manual control - it is details like this which make the panel such a joy to use. Another design detail that needs mentioning is the way the panel settings are automatically saved with any situation save in FS2000, which means (if you are anything like me) you can save those approaches you are unsure about and try them again without having to do the entire flight every time.

This version of 767 cockpit is a transitional layout between the traditional round instruments and the glass version, which adds a certain something to its charm. The "glass cockpit" makes its appearance in the shape of the electronic attitude direction indicator (EADI), the electronic horizontal situation indicator (EHSI) and the EICAS, all of which show every mode available on the original aircraft; but the "steam" instruments include an RMI (radio magnetic indicator), which makes flying DME arcs bearable. There is also a separate panel with the standby instruments just in case you experience a bus failure - and you can, because this sim has an element of a procedural simulator and you can setup most kinds of failures, should you want to experience them.

The panel stands quite high in the pilot's field of view, as this approach to Dublin airport shows. I have discussed this at some length before, but it is almost impossible to show a passenger jet panel in usable detail in FS2000 and not compromise the view to some extent. You can of course get around this by using the FS2000 controls (shift-backspace and shift-enter) to "pan" the outside view down. This method is preferred by the design team because if you resize the main panel (click and drag) to gain an increased outside view, this effectively "squashes" the main panel gauges and throws off the fonts on the EADI, EHSI and EICAS. On the whole, the view is OK until the final few moments as shown in the screen shot.

The mode control panel (MCP) of the automatic flight director system (AFDS) which tops the panel, manages not only to be correctly proportioned, but large enough to be usable - not an easy trick to pull off given the number of switches on the fascia. Once again, the programming of this component is impeccable and as far as I can judge it duplicates every function of its real-life counterpart.

The cockpit views have been taken with an very good camera and are very well aligned, although they take as long to load as any other virtual cockpit does in FS2000. One solution to the problem of long load times is to "look" in all directions prior to starting a flight, which will ensure that the views are cached and will load fast when you really need them. If you examine the screen shot here, Wilco obviously isn't ready to trust any of us with passengers yet, but maybe in an upgrade we will get to see some smiling faces in back? I would quite like to see some passengers back there, unaware that they have fallen into the hands of the Red Baron of flight simulation; a man who thinks nothing of doing a barrel roll straight off the runway, heh, heh. Sorry, enough of my fantasies. For further cockpit views check here and here.

I could go on and on about this package: about the way you can save the panel as a "cold" cockpit, and then preflight the aircraft using the actual checklists; about the fact that the reference documents are just about the best I have seen, bar the fact that they lack a step by step walk-though a complete flight; about the simulation of little details that would never even cross the average developer's mind, like the approach mode autopilot annunciators, or the hotspot which sets up all the speed bugs on the airspeed indicator; but I won't, because I think you should buy this product and find out these things for yourself.

As I indicated at the beginning of the review, this is the most technically perfect FS2000 panel I have ever seen. While the Phoenix 747 raised the bar for panel design, the Wilco 767 definitely sets the gold standard, and I doubt if it is possible to produce a significantly better aircraft and panel for Flight Simulator. Certainly, my expectations of FS2000 payware have been raised a great deal and I will be more critical of future packages having seen what can be done by a crack development team.

If you dig very, very deep, there are a few minor bugs, but the development team is aware of them all, and although we can expect an update to be issued in due course, most users will cope perfectly well without it. The only criticisms I have to make is that the FMC bitmap could be a little sharper, and a complete SID/STAR/transition database would definitely be welcome as standard, but I am prepared to wait for those. I should point out that it isn't possible to run the panel with the simulation rate set to faster than twice normal speed, but then I would also query whether anyone who is interested in exact simulation would want to make time pass that quickly.

Now for some frame rates:

I ran the tests in clear skies. Both machines were running Windows Millennium, MS Flight Simulator 2000 professional edition, update 2b applied. Specs: 733: Intel Pentium 733 MHz, 256 Mb RAM, Creative GeForce 2 GTS with 32 Mb RAM; 300: Intel Pentium 300 MHz, 128 Mb RAM, Voodoo 3000 16 Mb RAM. The 733 MHz machine has FSUIPC installed and both machines had terrain detail distance set to 24 miles.

The frame rate impact is quite large, as one would expect with a complex panel, somewhere between 35% and 66% over the default 737, but the panel ran fine on the 733 MHz machine. I didn't detect any big dips in frame rates, which were fairly constant throughout. In my opinion Wilco's suggestion that the 737 can be run on a 300 MHz Pentium with 64 Mb of RAM is correct, but it is only feasable if you do not fly in cloud or use highly detailed scenery, and you can expect some single figure frame rates, especially on approach.

Part of the joy of using this panel is that it works straight out of the box, and early adopters won't be faced with the traditional string of bug fixes that seem to be becoming a tradition with some suppliers - with some airliner panels even I have trouble working out what is a bug and what is a feature. When it comes down to it, this is the most in-depth simulation I have ever seen, right down to stuff that most developers wouldn't even bother with, like the hydraulics and even the stowable ram-air turbine. If enough people become familiar with the way this panel works, airlines using this plane are never going to have to worry about what happens if both pilots go down with dysentery in-flight - just as long as someone on board has studied 767 Pilot in Command, they should be able to sit in the left seat and the rest of the passengers would never know.

Visit Wilco Publishing.

Read another review that concentrates on different aspects of the add-on.

Read about how to modify your panel views for better realism.