FlightSim.Com Review: L-1011 TriStar

L-1011 TriStar By Just Flight

By Dave Nunez (17 August 2001)

hen you look at the TriStar today it looks a bit dumpy and out of place (where’d the fourth engine go?). It’s hard to believe that it was the most advanced airliner of its day - so advanced that the development program almost drove both Rolls Royce and Lockheed to bankruptcy. Still, the aircraft was produced (in small numbers), and Lockheed never made an airliner again.

In the MSFS world, we are no strangers to good quality commercial airliners, but most of them are the new generation aircraft such as the Airbus family and the Boeings (777, 757 and 747-400). We have all come to rely on FMCs, and a lot of the younger lot even wonder how it was possible without them. Pilots has created a package of the classic TriStar that should answer that question, and keep us in the nostalgia corner happy for weeks. This package, although created by Pilots, is released by Just Flight under its Classics label. The question is - does the “classic” here refer to the subject matter or the simulation?

What You Get

The package comes in one CD inside the same DVD style cover as the rest of the Just Flight Classics range. The CD includes separate FS2000 and FS98 versions, so that if you have FS2000 you can use the extra features (night lighting, etc.), but you can still use it perfectly well under FS98. You get two panels (100 series style and 500 series style), a sound set, and more liveries than you can shake an energy crisis at. Apart from the aircraft itself, you get a separate database program covering the L-1011 - information on every single airframe is included, with about 250 photos and a few animations. A treat for any TriStar fan.

The Aircraft Visual Model

Included in the package is a massive number of visual models, for just about every livery that a TriStar ever carried, including one privately run example. Rather than creating a generic TriStar texture, Pilots have modeled specific aircraft, and the manual includes the history of each. A nice touch, as it gives you a sense that you are flying an individual aircraft, rather than just a generic. The visual model created by Pilots is basic but good - it captures the oddities of the TriStar’s shape quite well. The models do not have a lot of polygons, so you will see corners, but then again the frame rates are excellent, and you will have no problems with this on an older machine. The textures themselves are accurate in their content (correct colors and fonts (for captions and logos), but somehow look unpolished. The dreaded “staircase effect” is visible on many of the liveries, particularly the Delta one, as this has black and red against white. I suspect that this is due to the fact that the textures were designed for use with FS98, forced aircraft painters to work from a limited palette. Still, there is nice night-lighting under FS2000. Overall, a mixed bag, but I couldn’t help find a nostalgic smile on my face as I admired the TriStars in flight.

The Flight Model (Air File)

The TriStar was notorious for being underpowered (at least in its earlier versions), and this aspect is captured quite well in this package. Expect to use up most of the runway on takeoff! Apart from that, the aircraft exhibits high roll inertia, as one would expect of something this size, which means that you need to constantly think ahead of the moves you are going to be making, so that you can start neutralizing the turn before you spill all your passengers’ drinks. The TriStar was not fly-by-wire in any modern sense of the word, so it has no fancy control devices, and the .air file shows this - it flies like a really big, really really heavy Cessna. I have to give this flight model a thumbs up, even if that thumb is bruised by fighting against my force-feedback stick.

The Sounds

The sounds included in the package are quite good, of a quality on par with those of the default FS2000 sounds. Apart from the engine sounds, there are a few new clicks and buzzes, although the package also makes use of the standard FS2000 sounds. I no have complaints here, except that on a few occasions I had to endure a continuous clocking sound when inside the cockpit. This may not be Pilots fault however, as it only occurred in some of the flights. Overall, the sound set stands up well to other aircraft packages I have seen.

The Panel

The package includes a very comprehensive panel which includes the captain’s panel, overhead, radio/INS panel, engine information panel, and the engineer’s panel. If you install the FS98 version, you apparently also get the first officer’s panel, although I have FS2000 only, so I didn’t try that. The panel captures the rather cramped feel of an all-analog aircraft, including some of the TriStar’s characteristic vertical tape gauges. The package covers four version of the TriStar, from the 100 series to the 500 series, and two panels are included (one for the older series - 100 and 200), and a newer one (for the 500), but the differences are quite minor, relating only to the positioning of some gauges. Apart from all the essential buttons and gauges, there are some nice extras - a pushback gauge, and a button which activates the cabin crew’s pre-takeoff announcements to the passengers. This type of little extra is really appreciated, and other developers can learn from Pilots in this regard.

Overall, I was disappointed by the panel. The graphics are not very well drawn, and it is sometimes difficult to read the captions on the instruments, as some of them are so tiny that they are little more than a cluster of eight or nine pixels. This is especially the case in the engineer’s panel where there is a mass of buttons and dials, only some of which are functional. I think a more prudent move on Pilot’s side would perhaps have been to reduce the number of non-functioning buttons and gauges so that the functioning ones could have been increased in size and thus usability. I often found myself straining to interpret what the condition of my aircraft was, simply because the panel was difficult to read.

The Inertial Navigation System

What really sets this aircraft apart from any other (including the freeware TriStars), is the realistic INS system, which opens up on its own pop-up window. For those of you too young to remember a time before airliners were run by one FMC and two thumb-twiddling pilots, the INS system was an extremely popular addition to the cockpit. An INS system is basically a black box which stores a series co-ordinates (waypoints), and interprets them as a route. It keeps track of current position, and updates the auto-pilot to keep the aircraft flying on track. Sounds like an FMC? The major difference is that an FMC can access the NAV radios and ADF and use these navaids to keep on track, but an INS only knows where the aircraft started from, and how it has moved relative to that spot. Also, technology was not advanced enough to make graphical displays in those days (the early 70s), so all you are show are lat/long pairs.

The Pilots INS is modeled quite well. You have a numeric keypad to enter co-ordinates with, a rotary knob to select mode (see below), and a auto/manual switch (which switches the INS from accepting a set of waypoints from the keypad to following the route). The INS supports a few other functions besides following the route - it displays how many degrees you are left or right from the track, the wind bearing and strength, time and distance to go to waypoint, and a few others. Pilot’s has done really well in capturing the pre-digital era of the L-1011’s INS, right down to the neon green eight segment display. The INS presented is quite an old one, before Lockheed added a VNAV capability in the early 80s. Just as well - flying the L-1011 is supposed to be a nostalgia trip anyway.

The INS is not without its faults, however. Firstly, Pilots does not seem to have simulated INS drift over time. INS systems were run via gyroscopes, so there was a tendency for them to drift over time, which gave a certain amount of error, especially over very long trips. I flew across the Atlantic for a test of drift, and yet the aircraft seemed to hit the waypoints bang on every time, with not so much as 3 feet of error. I don’t know if Pilots was doing this as a favor to us (coping with INS drift can be pain involving estimating positions via radios), or if they simply forgot. A second flaw is the graphics (a flaw which seems to plague all aspects of this product) - the INS panel itself is neatly drawn, but the ONS system next to it (which is not functional, but is included for completeness), is terribly drawn, with staircase effects on captions, and illegible captions. This is such a pity - I think Pilots would have done better to remove the ONS (seeing as it is not functional) than to have it detract from the quality of the panel. My final complaint about the INS is the most serious, and does not seem to have been addressed in either of the patch sets which can be found on the Pilots web site. Quite simply, the INS does not update its position unless the INS window is open. This means that if you close the INS window and overfly a waypoint, the INS will not update the autopilot, and you will start straying off your route. I checked this bug three times, because I could scarcely believe it. Flying a trip with this panel is a constant struggle with the INS panel. Close it to check the other instruments, then quickly open it again to ensure you don’t miss a turn. This is a terrible pity, because one of the central motivations behind having an INS on an aircraft is to remove the need for the pilots to constantly check position, but this bug means that you have to constantly worry about missing a turn.

Flying The Beast

Having broken it down into bits, you might still ask - what is it like to fly? Most of my recent airliner time has been spent on FMC equipped aircraft, so I needed a mental gear shift. On my first flight, I punched one of the waypoints in wrong (I entered 41 degrees rather than 11 degrees), and I quickly became very lost (genius me did this even though the manual warns you to double check your entries!). Once I got used to the INS, flying the TriStar became a happy experience, albeit tempered by the window-open bug. Takeoffs and landings require a lot longer runs than I am used to, but once I learned to suppress the “not going to make it before I run out of runway” urge, I had great fun. The best characteristic of this aircraft is its ground handling. Once you find the correct power setting (which varies greatly based on load), all you need is the brakes and nose wheel steering. Even finding my way around the mazes at Heathrow became a pleasant task. Flying this TriStar certainly is different from flying any other FS2000 airliner, and I want to congratulate Pilots on correctly capturing the experience of an aircraft rather than simply its parameters.

Conclusions

The real TriStar was considered a dog on paper, but its crews loved it. This package seems to suffer from the same syndrome - the graphics are not that great, the visual models are only average, but touching down after a transatlantic haul with the primitive nav gear (and arriving more or less on time) makes you want to pat yourself on the back. I don’t know if it qualifies as a “classic” though - I wouldn’t have bought it at its full price, but at Just Flight’s reduced price, I would get it while muttering, “oh why not?”

I certainly would not rank this package as a “must get” for the general crowd, but if you think you are on top of all things flightsim, airline flying minus the FMC might just prove to be the new challenge you are looking for.

Dave Nunez
Cape Town, South Africa
faybs@iafrica.com

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