Boeing 747-400 Panel

By Andrew Tucker (5 December 2002)

Firstly, a little about myself. I am 36 years of age, and I live in Perth, Western Australia. I am a computer network engineer who also happens to hold an Australian Commercial Pilots Licence. I have been flying for eleven years, but the biggest aircraft that I have ever flown solo is a Partenavia P-68.

Despite this, I have been a person who has been lucky enough to be "in the right place at the right time". This all started some years ago, when I asked if I could sit in on an approach into Kai Tak airport. After the flight crew perusing my licence, this was granted. More recently, I flew an entire trip Perth to Sydney, in the cockpit of a Qantas 747-300. During this flight, the captain became a good friend of mine.

   

Through this friend, I got to fly real time in the Qantas 747-400 simulator, even though I could not log the time. This is why I volunteered to test this panel for Jorge Salas on my system. The default panel that comes with the Microsoft 747-400 is, in my opinion, very incorrect from a pilot's perspective. Having played with the real thing, I can confirm this. Jorge made a major improvement straight away with the resizing of the perspective views of his panel. Now, when you are on final, it is nice to be able to see the runway!

   

To validate this, I flew a short flight, Cathay Pacific CX-171, from Shanghai to Kai Tak. The aircraft was fully loaded but with only 40% fuel. I used this as a deliberatly difficult test for the panel. In all cases, frame rates were much higher than the default panel, and the layout is far more logical. I have included images of the different windows that one can use with the panel.

   

Of special interest is the TCAS panel, which shows other air traffic around you for up to forty miles. This is a very good addition. In my screen shots, I believe that the lack of additional traffic is due to the scenery add-on that I am using not being compliant with Project AI. I also noticed that Jorge has made major improvements to the clarity of the instruments of the virtual panel. Much needed indeed!

   

I believe that the rest of this story can be adequately told by the screen shots. I have been getting excellent frame rates with this panel, given the limits of my video card. I am currently running a GeForce4 MX420, and at 1024x768, 32-bit color, with AI Traffic at 100%, I was getting between 20 to 28 frames per second in high density areas.

   

Overall, I am very impressed with this panel. There have been many renditions of the Boeing 747-400 panel, but I would have to say that this is one of the best. I congratulate Jorge on his hard work and patience, and his easy accepatnce of my comments on how we could improve this panel whilst it was still in its beta stages.

   

I'm sure that we will be hearing more of Jorge Salas in the future. In the meantime, I hope that everybody will appreciate the time and effort that has been put into making this panel as accurate as it is. It is through the hard work and dedication of authors such as Jorge that we have so much variation in our hobby. I would prompt everybody to send him an email saying thanks.

This has certainly given me more pleasure flying Boeings' "Jumbo".

Now, if only we could get a 747 "classic" panel with tape style engine gauges...

   

Andrew Tucker
tuckerajt@optusnet.com.au

Download Jorge Salas' Boeing 747-400 panel