Phoenix Simulation Software Boeing 747-400

Now for the sake of keeping everything organized I am going to review this in three parts.

The Aircraft: When this aircraft first loaded up on my screen I was amazed at the detail! You could literally see every little nut and bolt on the side of the fuselage! Now obviously the textures took quite a while to load as they do with most decent FS2K planes but it was definitely worth the wait.

     

The first thing I did was fire up the engines. Now I'm lazy so I usually use "CTRL-E" but this time I decided to do it the real way. I'll elaborate more on this below in the section for the panel. When the engines started I noticed that the fan blades started to turn, slowly at first and then they sped up as they should and those appeared pretty impressive. After this I went to lower the flaps as is common practice when flying below 10,000 feet. Obviously this is not the first aircraft ever to have moving flaps, most of the decent ones do. But this is the first aircraft I've seen that has flaps this realistic. Most flaps on FS planes move down pretty fast, as the average simmer doesn't want to sit around and wait for the flaps to move. Not this plane! The flaps moved down nice and slowly, and they made a nice curve back and down, not just back as a lot of the flaps do.

I didn't notice it at first but if you look really closely under the spoilers and in the space created by the flaps you will notice that the inside of the wing structure is visible! You can see it! Now if you can find me another FS plane that can do that I'd be extremely surprised as I own most of the good ones and have never seen anything like this.

     

Now we'll move on to the landing gear, which is a marvel in itself. The wheels are perfectly circular, and look just like real wheels with the exception of the fact that they're in a computer screen. If you look closely at the landing gear you can actually see the bolts in the side of the gear assembly and all. The motion of the gear is incredibly smooth and clear, and the gear bay doors move very well. But what sets this aircraft apart from the crowd is that this is the first plane I've ever seen that has a 3-dimensional landing gear bay; the gear didn't just retract into the bottom of the plane but it retracted into its bay.

The fuselage itself is also very detailed and the plane is almost perfectly round. Any fool knows that a 747 isn't round when viewed directly from the front but more of an egg shape. Well let's just say it's the best egg shape I've ever seen! It has been said that absolute perfection is unattainable, and if that's true then these guys came pretty near.

Night lighting has become the latest "fad" of the FS world and this aircraft has exemplary night lights! One final feature that I noticed and felt deserved recognition was the presence of actual thrust reversers (only visible when reverse thrust is active) and that is another feature that is unique to this aircraft as far as I know. The de-synchronized beacons are just one of the few subtle touches they have used for added realism and believe me it gets noticed.

The aircraft alone (without panel and sounds) is 5 pounds sterling.

Panel & Sounds: The panel was as good if not better than the aircraft. It was the most detailed and had the best night lighting of any I've ever seen. Now I know that Peter James says he thinks it's too high, but as I demonstrated in one of the screen shots the panel has a button that you can press where it moves you to a higher view, above the standard FS view which is from about that of a 3 year old.

The panel has all of the gauges on a real 747 panel accurately depicted, and when I say all I mean all of the gauges. On what other panel is there actually a working dimmer control for the engine gauges? The answer is there are no other panels that have that feature. How many panels have a button to lock the flight deck door? There aren't any that I know of. Most panels have a slim little bar at the top that has things like the light switches and pitot heat and sometimes the engine start button. This panel doesn't have that, it has an entire window that comes up with the entire overheard view; from fuel cross feeds to lighting it's got it all!

As I said earlier when I tried to start the engines manually I was a little rusty, but after a few minutes I was able to get them all running perfectly, but I had to hit all of about a dozen switches per engine in the right order before they would work! As you can see from the screen shot that view is quite detailed.

Another feature that helps this panel stand out from the rest is that this panel has its own Flight Management Computer (FMC), complete with long-range navigation system. I have been fortunate enough to have the experience of sitting in the cockpit of a real 747 (didn't fly it just got my picture taken) and it was exactly like in the real thing. This FMC was a little complicated to figure out and it would have helped to have had a text file to help me out, but I figured it out eventually as it was modeled exactly after the real thing.

The FMC of course corresponds to, and words hand-in-hand with the autopilot, which is made especially for this panel, and is not the standard issue FS2K A/P, which most people are used to seeing. This autopilot was much better and much more realistic.

The throttle quadrant was beautifully done, with the most realism I've ever seen (realism seems to be a recurring theme throughout the package!). You can view the status of all the systems of the airplane, and also operate the FMC from there, although it also has its own bigger view.

The navigation panel was also very well done and not the standard FS one. This one includes "No Smoking" and "Seatbelts" signs as well. One last feature I noticed that made this panel stand out was its incredible night lighting, as well as the presence of override switches. These switches can be used to override things like landing gear and flaps as well as other functions--and the work too!

The panel can be purchased for 10 pounds sterling.

Just the presence of sounds speaks for itself as only the most elite of flight simulation aircraft actually have them, but this one does! They can be purchased for additional 5 pounds sterling, and are well worth it at that. I don't know if these are recorded from an actual 747 but they sure sound like it. The sounds really do a great job of bringing the package together and I would highly recommend purchasing them.

This aircraft comes very close to warranting a perfect score, but I just can't squeak it out to give it to them as the frame rates aren't perfect but are still good for the level of detail the aircraft depicts. Also I took off an additional two points because I really find it annoying that the aircraft, panel and sounds have to be purchased separately, and I also don't like the idea of having each paint scheme being five pounds. If you disagree with me then re-add the two points.

I give product aircraft a 96 out of 100 points.

     

Jeremy Morrison
jeremy@flightsim.com

Visit Phoenix Simulation Software at http://www.phoenix-simulation.co.uk