Aerosoft/PMDG Boeing 747-400

By Andrew Herd (21 April 2006)

ired by the success of the 707, Boeing had just begun work on the design of a high capacity successor when the US military released a specification for a large transport. In the event Lockheed won the contract with the C-5, but Pan Am rescued Boeing by issuing a requirement for an airliner twice the size of the 707 and this design went on to become the 747 we know as the 'Queen of the Skies'. A variety of configurations were considered, including one with double decks running the whole length of the fuselage that turned out to be impractical for safety reasons, but in a far-sighted move Boeing opted for a high cockpit and shortened upper deck that allowed the nose to be hinged up. This not only made the 747 one of the most distinctive hulls ever built, it meant that cargo versions could swallow vast loads and ensured that production would go on for the best part of four decades.

Despite all the ingenuity that went into the design, development came near to bankrupting Boeing, involving as it did building an absolutely vast new assembly hall near Everett, Washington; and working with Pratt and Whitney on a new high bypass turbofan, the JT9D, an engine that was developed specifically for the new plane. However, the real problem was that when Pan Am signed up for 25 of the new hulls in 1966, Boeing agreed to start delivery in 1970, which allowed very little time to develop such an enormously sophisticated aircraft. As we know, the gamble paid off handsomely, with production far exceeding the company's original estimate of 400 hulls, but the 747's future was by no means assured at launch - concerns about the size and fuel consumption of the new plane meaning that many buyers opted for tri-jets like the DC-10 and the Tristar. Eventually, modern widebody jets like the larger Airbus models and Boeing's own 767 and 777 began to offer significant competition to the 747, but having become one of the world's favorite planes the hull remains in production and a new variant, known as the 747-8, has been announced with the idea of providing competition for the A380.

747 production started with the -100, built to fulfill the Pan Am contract and fitted with an upper lounge area behind the cockpit, a feature much appreciated by advertising agencies of the time, who vied with each other to provide wide angle views of the 'clipper' like interior and the spiral staircase to the upper deck. The -100B had a generally beefed up structure and this in turn was replaced by the 747SR, which was progressively modified to carry up to 563 people, but over shorter ranges than the original -100. Then came the -200, with more fuel and more powerful engines; and the 747SP, which was a cut-and-shut job designed to get Boeing out of a hole and allow it to compete with the trijets on something like level ground. Following the same theme, the -300 was actually intended a trijet, but the expected demand never materialised, so Boeing revamped it to include a stretched upper deck and increased the tankage yet again. Next was the -400, as featured here, which has extended wingtips, a modern glass cockpit, more economical engines, even more fuel and which does away with the flight engineer needed to operate the earlier models.

The 747 has understandably been a very popular plane with flight simmers and until FS2002 appeared, it was something of a mystery why Microsoft didn't include it as a default plane. As a result, numerous addon 747s have been released both as freeware and as payware, the ones that stand out for me on the payware side being Ralph Tofflemire's 747-200, which has undergone numerous upgrades over the past five years and is presently marketed under the 'Ready for Pushback' banner; the PSS 747-400, which is still available for FS2000/FS2002 under the 'World Airliners' tag. As far as freeware goes, you can take your pick, but my favorites are the Project Open Sky series and the MelJet 747.

Aerosoft's product arrived in a medium-thickness DVD style case, which contained the installation CD, two manuals and a 'cockpit views' guide, of which more later. Complex addon that this is, installation took a while, but it ultimately boils down to the usual simple matter of sticking the CD in the drive and following the prompts. The only decision that has to be made is about whether to do a full installation or not and unless hard disk space is a problem for you, I suggest installing the whole enchilada. Copy protection relies on a registration key which is pasted into the product case and the whole process ran without a hitch when I tried it. Eighteen liveries are included on the CD and these can be installed separately; in the process you are offered a choice between installing DXT3 or higher quality 32 bit textures, the latter being recommended if you have a high end system. Checking out the PMDG website revealed a wide selection of free liveries available for download, although there is some overlap between the files on the website and the installation set. I installed a few of the website liveries as part of the review and they worked fine.

The addon manual is 59 pages long and was in English in the version I reviewed. Reading this before loading the 747 for the first time is definitely a good idea, as PMDG have delivered much more than a plane and a set of liveries. For example, it is possible to save the panel in just about any state you want, to be reloaded later; you can specify nearly 150 different types of system failure; and there are a multitude of options related to panel setup. The Flight Management Computer (FMC) manual is a little shorter at 53 pages, but nonetheless, it is packed with information and you will struggle to fly the plane long distance without it. The cockpit views poster Aerosoft include is something of an innovation as far as simmers are concerned, but it will be a familiar aid to ATPLs, who spend many hours learning to feel their way around cockpit diagrams blindfold in order to get accredited and to pass checkrides.

In addition to the printed manuals, the installation creates a link on the start menu 'PMDG 747-400 operating manuals', which gives you access to a further eleven pdf documents, covering everything you could possibly need to know about the operation of the plane - be warned that it takes a while to read all of these, given that they total 384 pages. At this stage, readers will have divided neatly into two groups: one of which is thinking, "400 pages of manuals? Do me a favor!"; and the other is thinking, "Wow, I wonder how much it is, because I am gonna have to buy this one..." Suffice it to say that this is one of the most complex packages ever released for Flight Simulator and as such it makes a pair with the 'Ready for Pushback' 747-200, which simulates a (much) earlier generation of this legendary plane, allowing 747 fans to fly two quite different versions of their favorite heavy. It is amazing to think that only half a dozen years ago, such a situation would have been almost unimagineable.

Looking at the software in more detail, the one applet you get is a load manager, which is accessible from the start menu and can be found in the PMDG 747-400 operating manuals group - this allows you to set fuel and pax to any combination you want, with useful warnings should you try and exceed maximum takeoff weight. In practice, you don't need any more than this, because a 'PMDG' item appears on the FS2004 menu when the 747 is loaded and this allows you to alter just about any parameter you can think of, starting with whether the visual model includes a virtual cockpit (VC) or not - useful for simmers with lower spec systems - and going on to include options for such exotica as setting the inertial reference system (IRS) alignment time anywhere from a realistic ten minutes down to instantaneous. The pop-up dialog which is triggered by this menu item allows you to set up refresh and display parameters for the glass displays in the cockpit, alter the way the automatic flight director system (AFDS) works, fine tune volume levels for cockpit sounds and to directly fill the tankage, independently of the FS2004 system. This latter point is important, as PMDG took a decision very early on in the development to bypass many of Microsoft's core programming in order to achieve the ultimate in realism, with the result that when you set up a particular fuel load, for example, the addon correctly sets up the 747s fuel management system in order to save you the embarassment of running dry on the taxiway as a result of a valve being set in the wrong position.

Further items on the PMDG menu allow you to save or load particular panel states and to set up failures in just about any system you can think of - sixteen different types of electrical failure are available, to give but one example. The developers advise that when a flight involving the 747 is saved, the panel state is saved separately, as otherwise it is possible for the two to get out of synch. They are right.... it happens (-:

Random failures can also be assigned, these being ranked according to severity, the other user adjustable option on this part of the menu being the frequency at which failures occur - while some will dismiss this as a gimmick, others will find it adds immensely to their enjoyment of the simulation. I set up a few scenarios like this and found that some failures, if not acted upon promptly, triggered cascades of other failures and that it is also possible to cause systems to fail by flying the 747 beyond its limits. One of the most useful options of all is the facility to pause the plane at the top of descent (T/D) which means that you can get some sleep while the autopilot flies the plane long distance and wake in the morning to find it poised ready for you to take control of the interesting bit - assuming you got your fuel calculations right and the plane isn't bobbing in mid-Atlantic. No, pause at T/D isn't realistic, but a real 747 has a co-pilot and this mode is the nearest you will get to having one in FS2004.

Because of the sophistication of the fuel management system, the developers strongly advise that the 747 should only be fuelled using the fuel and pax applet, or via the PMDG menu - the one thing that is missing being a fuel planner applet. The manual does, however, have a very helpful section on how to calculate the fuel required for different flight profiles and distances and this worked well in my experience as long as you stick to the airspeed advisories in climbout. While on this point, the 747 is modelled for a maximum gross landing weight of 630,000 pounds and exceeding this is likely to trigger structural failure - so don't try any touch and goes with a full fuel and pax load! The manual includes a very useful section on maximum and optimum cruise altitudes for given gross weights which takes all the guesswork out of figuring out cruise flight levels - if other FS addons contained such lucid advice, the forums would be considerably quieter than they are (-: The only snag here is that it is almost impossible to be certain what the oceanic upper winds will be like in FS2004, so some assumptions have to be made, but I guess that isn't so much different from reality. One tip is that whatever your style of simming, you must think about the gross weight of this plane at takeoff, because if you fill it full of fuel and passengers and then set off on a short flight, not only will it take you forever to climb to altitude, you will end up flying around for hours trying to burn off excess fuel before you can land.

Minimum system requirements are given as a Pentium IV 1.8 GHz with 512Mb RAM and a 64Mb graphics card, while for best performance a Pentium IV 3.0 GHz with a 1GB of RAM is recommended. While the recommended spec is realistic, I wouldn't want to run this addon on a 1.8 gig system, as doing so would involve pulling most of the sliders all the way to the left and removing half the reason for buying the addon in the first place. As it is, on a 3.0 GHz system using the 32 bit textures with all the PMDG gauge options maxed out, the 747 returned frame rates in low double figures taxiing at complex airports with any significant amount of cloud and 100% AI traffic enabled - these frame rates persisted throughout early climbout, though at no stage was the plane unflyable. Reducing the gauge refresh rates, reverting to DXT3 textures and cutting AI traffic down some made me a happier bunny, so the verdict is that the developers have done a good job of making a complex sim as frame rate friendly as possible; but it remains a complex simulation and as such, it demands a fast machine to make it sing.

The visual model can only be described as highly impressive and boasts no less than 1200 moving parts, the flaps and gear being worthy of particular attention - as you can see from the screenshots, the gear bays are examples of their kind. In addition to the extreme detail found in the visual model, the developers have clearly expended a lot of energy getting timings of things like flap deployment exactly right, with the result that many simmers will find themselves tapping their fingers waiting for even twenty degrees of extension. There is none of the hit the switch and cope with the pitch type of FS flap deployment we know so well and the plane handles much better for it. The textures are fantastic and PMDG have gone the whole way on modelling wing movements, so that the wing flexes realistically under different fuel loads and gross weights. At the expense of assigning specific key commands, you can open every door on the hull and the developers have seen to it that the point of view is properly adjusted so that the plane can be docked properly at most addon airport gates. While I am on the subject, maneuvering the plane on the ground is an education, given that it requires an outer wingtip clearance of nearly 150 feet and once again, PMDG have seen to it that the ground handling is much more realistic than one would expect for an FS addon.

The first time I loaded the 747 I was expecting to see PMDG's usual 'art' graphics, so it was a real surprise to discover that the addon has a photorealistic cockpit. This is a new venture for PMDG as far as airliner sims go and the result is generally very good indeed, with all the 2D panels displaying well with crisp graphics and readable legends right up to 1600 x 1200 on a twenty inch monitor. The only slight let-downs are the radio panel and the pedestal, but that is only by comparison to the forward panels and the overhead, which are absolutely first class. As you can see above, the plane is provided with both left and right hand 2D cockpit panel views, so it can be flown from either seat in this mode, the easiest method of switching views being the mini-panel you can see sitting unobtrusively at the top of the screen. To begin with I thought the min-panel was going to get in the way, but in practice you get used to it pretty quickly and it is extremely useful. In addition to standard forward views, a 'zoom' mode is available, which increases the relative size of the glass gauges, while still presenting them as part of the panel, and the PFD and ND can also be zoomed independently, as shown in one of the screenshots a couple of rows down.

The virtual cockpit (below left) is well up to the high standard set by the rest of the addon and it is practical to use it to fly the sim, although if you have a marginal system, panning can be quite slow due to the very high level of detail involved. The sheer size of the 747 cockpit means that it can be quite tricky to use some of the controls if you don't have TrackIR or ActiveCamera to give you a helping hand, but I had a great deal of fun flying the plane in this mode with TrackIR and can easily imagine that once many simmers have tried it, it will be hard to drag them back to another plane. According to the developers, the 747 was developed with the intention of the user being able to fly it from the VC, using ActiveCamera or TrackIR as an aid, but the 2D panel is excellent, with several options which allow enhanced functionality on multiple monitor systems; chief among these is an option to allow undocked secondary panels to be displayed; allowing them to be dragged onto a second monitor.

FS2004 limitations mean that of the five com radios that most 747-400s possess, only two of the units have been simulated, but an interesting aside in the manual is that the developers are looking at providing weather and time reporting functionality in the Arinc Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) in a future update. If they deliver, it will be the first time, as far as I am aware, that this has been done for an FS payware addon. Otherwise, you get all the usual other radios, including twin ADFs, VORs and DMEs. The navigational suite includes a full simulation of the intertial reference system, radio altimeter and ground proximity warning system (GPWS) - the latter includes windshear warnings which are annunciated on the PFD and accompanied by autopilot flight director system (AFDS) pitch and roll guidance. All in all, we are looking at a very complex airplane.

From the seats, the information derived from these systems is presented on twin primary flight displays (PFDs) and navigation displays (NDs), with a paired EICAS stack placed centrally on the panel. All this wizardry is controlled, as you might expect, by an electronic flight information system mode control panel (EFIS MCP) which is fully implemented with the exception of being able to display weather information - but can be used to display TCAS data on the ND - just make sure that you turn on one of the TCAS modes on the radio panel, or you will waste many mouse clicks trying to get the traffic around your 747 to display. The elements of the EFIS have just about all the functionality of their real life counterparts as far as I can tell, the FS gauges being beautifully implemented and fully customisable via the PMDG menu item. Looking at the PFD for example, it is capable of displaying not only all the usual attitude, altitude, vertical speed and heading information, but also airspeed trend, minimum and maximum maneuvering speed bars and flap settings below FL200. Seven roll and ten pitch modes can be annunciated, together with five autothrottle and five AFDS modes, making this one of the most sophisticated PFDs I have seen in an FS addon.

The ND has four different display modes (approach, VOR, map and plan) and can be switched to show any range scale between 10 and 640 nm. All the usual features you would expect are included. Heading, trend vectors, range to altitude intercept, speeds, radio and navaid data and ETAs are displayed on the unit, as in the real 747-400; and the map can be switched between expanded and compass rose mode as the user wishes. Needless to say, you get all the usual magenta line display, distance to next waypoint and ETAs, along with a vertical deviation indicator and a static flight plan display that lets you step through a plan loaded on the FMC before flying it. This is one of the few big iron sim NDs I have seen that has holding pattern and procedure turn displays included and qualifies as the most fully implemented ND gauge I have ever seen. The primary and secondary EICAS displays are also simulated to the highest possible level, with eight different display modes implemented on the secondary display as shown below - a helpful feature if you have opted for in-flight failures to occur. Given that virtually every system from the electrical buses to the hydraulics can be troubleshot with this display, it is a very fine example of coding.

The flight management system (FMS) maintains the high standard of coding demonstrated by this addon and provides a very realistic simulation of what it is like to operate a real 747-400 FMS. What an FMS does is to co-ordinate all the navigational, flight and route data available from the aircraft systems and present it to the AFDS so that the ideal flight path can be followed, either by a pilot following pitch and roll cues presented on the PFD, or more often, under the control of the autopilot. As pilot, you control the FMS via the control display unit (CDU), using the mode control panel (MCP) to modify AFDS settings. Typically, this is the place where bugs can be expected to turn up in FS airliner addons, as the highly complex code required to simulate these complex systems is beyond the majority of developers, but in the 747-400 it all works as advertised - a real feather in PMDG's hat.

All three CDU's are operational in the sim, although the central unit is normally only used as a backup should another one fail. Simmers familiar with these units from other addons should be aware that the developers have modelled the latest version of the Boeing software, which means that there are some changes from existing published manuals, although most of these are small, other than the inclusion of the newly added ability to input GPS derived data on the POS INIT page. Once again, the simulation of the flight management computer (FMC)/CDU combination is extraordinarily well done and all the CDU pages are active with the exception of ATC and FMC/COM and the current version of the software cannot list all saved routes for display on the CDU, although an upgrade to include this is planned. An unexpected bonus is that the developers have included something like 350 pre-programmed routes which can be loaded and flown without further editing - a nice touch which is all that is needed to get a new user in the air as fast as possible, although it would be better if the addon let you view them. The FMC manual is very well written, although it is necessarily complex and newbies will find it a little overwhelming, but I can't recall seeing a more lucid approach to this difficult subject and if I had to start learning about how to program FMCs, this would be my first choice of addon to do it. Five types of waypoint can be programmed in: nav database fixes; along track waypoints; place/bearing/distance waupoints; lat/lon waypoints; and place bearing/place bearing waypoints, so it is possible to program the FMC using almost all the modes available on the real thing. A good, although not totally inclusive range of SID/STARs are included and while I am on the subject, regular updates of the FMC database should be available on the PMDG website.

In testing, I couldn't find any significant bugs in the software, which is impressive for an addon of this degree of complexity. The 747 handled all the routes I threw at it, including complicated transitions and approach procedures. Part of the reason for this is due to the excellence of the flight model, which is one of the most realistic ever developed for Flight Simulator. Getting the 'feel' of a heavy like the 747 is almost impossible using the creaky .air file system in FS2004, but the developers have somehow managed to deliver the goods and I would be hard put to think of another 747 sim that feels so right. Particular highlights include the fact that the 747 is one of the few FS airliners that allow proper rotation - you can actually hold the nose at eight degrees as you wait for the wing to generate enough lift to take you skyward. In addition, the developers have correctly modelled the enormous difference between flying the 747 empty and at gross weight; in the latter case, ten thousand feet of runway can feel uncomfortably short.

Verdict? If you have a 3.0 GHz Pentium or faster, the Aerosoft/PMDG 747-400 is an almost compulsory buy. Why? For a start, it is the most impressive large airliner sim I have seen in a long while - in quality terms, its only real rival being the Level-D 767; in some respects, the 747 is better than the Level-D plane, which is saying something, since the latter has years of development behind it. Looking at the Aerosoft product from a different viewpoint, it has some of the best documentation I have seen with an airliner sim and most important of all, it is virtually bug free. The only problem is that it takes a little bit of time to really get your head around it, but then isn't that why most of us like to fly big iron in the first place? A truly great simulation.