ust when you thought the last word had been said on the Boeing 737 as far as FS2004 was concerned, along comes another take on this classic airplane, this time by Wilco and feelThere and published by Just Flight. 'Another 737?'. Yep, there is one in the default installation of Flight Simulator, then there was the DreamFleet 737, which never made it past FS2002, but was replaced in most people's setups by the excellent Aerosoft PMDG 737, and several zillion freeware releases, not least that Project OpenSky 737-700 and eDimensional's 737-200 private jet, which is only a couple of mouse clicks away should you wish to fly it. A point worth noting is that the PMDG addons simulate the third generation of the 737, with the Just Flight 737 simulating the second generation - all it would take would be for another developer to release the -100 and -200 series and we would have the set.
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The reason the 737 is such a popular target for FS developers has everything to do with the popularity of the real version. Boeing announced the -100 series back in sixty five, as a short range feeder jet with a hundred seats - little can anyone at Seattle have imagined that it would still be in production, forty years later, with up to double the seating capacity and everything else about the design changed out of recognition, except for its comfortable 'don't worry about a thing, let me take care of it all' look. There is something about the 737 that gives you confidence that this plane isn't going to do anything except fly you to your destination, no fuss, no drama, just take you there and back like the winged Greyhound bus it is. True, the 737 is considerably more sophisticated than the average bus, but that is only because most buses don't cruise at three quarters of the speed of sound at thirty thousand feet, so over the years the old analog instruments (which wouldn't have looked out of place on the road) have been replaced by glass and the end result has pleased so many people that the airlines have kept on buying them, which has made the 737 the most popular passenger jet of all time.
We'll skip back a little bit in time before I begin this review, back to the days when the first addons with working flight management computers (FMCs) began to be released about half a dozen years ago. Among the products in question were the afore-mentioned DreamFleet 737 and the PSS 777, which came with functional FMCs and manuals thick enough to test your biceps, let alone your memory. As more and more packages were released with working FMCs and the their coding began to simulate the way the real units worked more and more closely, simmers began to go out and buy manuals written to help ATPLs through check rides, written by the likes of Bill Bulfer and Mike Ray. Peppered as they were with real-world examples of how pilots did things, these manuals increased the reality of simulated flights quite dramatically and it wasn't long before the major FS sites saw the opportunity and began to stock them. The only baffling thing about this tale is that it has taken so long for a developer to sign up either Mike or Bill to write a manual for an FS product, but then I guess that if good ideas were obvious to everyone, we would all be millionaires.
The package reviewed here is marketed by Just Flight, and developed by Wilco and feelThere. Wilco have been associated with a long line of 'Pilot in Command' products, starting with the classic first release of 767 PIC back in 2001, but the 737 represents something of a leap forward for feelThere, who are probably best known for their popular Cessna Caravan addon; a range of feeder jets including an ERJ and a CRJ; and a 777 - all the jets being marketed by Wilco.
The system requirements for the 737 are quoted as being a 1.8 Ghz Pentium or equivalent, running XP on 512 Mb of RAM, a 64 Mb video card, 600 Mb of free hard disk space and a DVD drive. Needless to say, faster is better and neither would more RAM on the motherboard and on the video card go amiss if you want to run this simulation at its best. I would have said that a 3.0 Ghz Pentium with at least a gig of RAM and a 128 Mb video card would be needed to run the 737 comfortably, especially if you intend to visit any complex airports or fly with real weather and 100% AI enabled. This will, I realise, come as a terrible shock to those of you who were cherishing hopes of running the 737 PIC on granddad's 4k TRS-80, but life's a bitch and all that - if it is any comfort, even 3 Ghz Pentium's ain't as fast as they used to be, or at least, it seems like that some days. Cyberlink power media player review.
The package comes in a DVD style box containing a single disk, a Just Flight flyer and a neat 67 page manual, much of it written by Mike Ray, a retired 747-400 pilot who is well known in the world of aviation for his Boeing Super Guppy Simulator Checkride Manual. Mike has a particularly easy and amusing style, which he backs up with copious illustrations and flow charts and his part of the Just Flight manual contains enough instruction to get you up and running, including programming the FMC and using the mode control panel (MCP - wide box in the center of the glareshield) properly. Mike's excellent 290 page checkride manual (which is available separately) is referred to throughout the 737 PIC docs. The only snag with the printed documentation is that there is only just enough to give you a taste of what the sim is capable of doing and to get the most out of it you will need to buy a copy of Mike's checkride manual, so be prepared to factor this into the cost. Another slight issue is that Just Flight appear to have made some changes which are not reflected in the manual - for example, Mike warns that by default the sim is over gross, but although the -500 is, the -300 and -400 are not. I suspect that some alert character noticed this and fixed the problem in the installation without realising that it was mentioned in the docs.
Nothing worth remarking upon happened during the installation, bar the fact that if you aren't concentrating, it is possible to miss the opportunity to install something like 57 - no kidding - additional airline liveries via a separate option on the installation banner. The manual quotes 70, but some airlines have liveries for all three versions of the 737 included in the installation, although most of the ones on the list only operate one or two types. The choice is phenomenally wide, ranging as it does from Aer Lingus to Siberian Airlines and browsing through them all is quite an education; one thing is for certain, if you buy this package, you need never get bored of the paint scheme.
I also installed the CD version update, which is available from the Wilco website and is only just over a couple of megs. One potential catch is that if you have FSUIPC installed, but this is not version 3.5 or higher, you may get erratic behavior out of the autopilot; Wilco state that this is due to a bug in earlier versions of FSUIPC, the correct setup being given on the same page as the CD update, although someone at Wilco has finger trouble and their page suggests users need FSUIPC 5.3 or higher. Another tip is not to go on a livery install fest before you install the patch, because this overwrites the aircraft.cfg files and you will have to install the schemes all over again (-:
Checking out my PC revealed a new Wilco program group, containing links to configuration utilities for each type of panel and a checklist in the form of a jpg. The config utility is best described as sparse, though it works well and lets you fine tune such things as gauge refresh rates, as well as configure the panel for any state between cold and dark and hot to trot. There is no load or configuration manager as such, any alterations being done the usual way via the FS menus.
The aircraft themselves are found under a Boeing feelThere Wilco tag, headlined by the -300, -400 and -500 variants. In turn, each of these has a 'full' version; a 2D panel only version; a 2D panel and wingview version; and a virtual cockpit (VC) only version. For those of you who are interested in such things, the -300 was the first variant of the 'second generation' CFM56 powered 737, although it shares 80% airframe spares commonality with the -200. The -400 is a stretched, longer range version of the same airframe; while the -500 is shorter, with slightly less range. You might ask why anyone would buy the -500, given that it carries most of the weight penalty of the -300, but airlines operating a mix of 737 'Classic' variants needed little persuasion given the crewing and spares commonality between the three different versions.
Loading the plane for the first time brings up the 2D panel, which is a truly excellent graphic, staying crisp right up to 1600 x 1200, without so much as a hint of stepping anywhere and not a bad edit in sight. In this age of digital photography there is no excuse for payware developers delivering any less and the days of charging $30 or more for an addon with a badly edited, blurry panel are officially gone. In one of my other lives I edit an angling magazine and we don't accept sub 8 megapixel camera graphics any more, with many publishers setting a higher bar than that, so I am always slightly amazed by the low quality shots that some FS developers regard as adequate. Anyway, suffice it to say that feelThere have done an impressively good job on this one, although if you use the 2D panel only version of the 737, the other seven cockpit views are 'missing' in as much as you get a completely unobstructed view in whichever direction the hat control takes you, without any framing. I find this a bit unnerving, but to be fair, it is how Microsoft does things. With the VC version loaded, the situation changes and the 2D panel side views are framed by stills from the VC, with the inevitable graphical mismatch that results from this approach - personally I prefer to see custom 2D graphics used, because the higher resolution makes them look much more realistic.
You get seven subpanels including forward and aft overheads, CDU, throttle quadrant, pedestal, flaps, gear and the EFIS control panel, plus zooms of the primary instruments. The zooms can be dragged to truly enormous dimensions without losing any definition worth mentioning, which is a huge plus, but what you do not get is a first officer panel, so you are doomed to fly the plane from the left hand seat - nice work if you can get it. The unzoomed gauges are all extremely well presented, with virtually faultless graphics and very believable glass reflections, the only possible criticism being that the EFIS control panel plays old Harry with your eyesight if you run FS2004 at the higher screen resolutions that this addon demands. The main attractions are the Electronic Attitude and Direction Indicator (EADI) and the Electronic Horizontal Situation Indicator (EHSI), which are the two screens stacked in front of the pilot. As far as I can tell these units display all the modes that the real ones are capable of showing and if Mike Ray is happy with them, then I guess the rest of us can be content. Unusually for a sim of this type, the panel doesn't appear to have many hotspots, navigation around the subpanels being done using a nest of simicons positioned upper left in the 2D panel view, but the instrument click spots are generously sized and consistent in operation, it being possible to alter radio frequencies using the mouse wheel, which is a nice touch. While I am on the case, the radio panel is one of the best bits of the 2D cockpit and from the look of the graphic, came from a plane which had seen a good deal of honest use. The overhead is very neat too, and although a few of the switches and knobs don't work, all the useful ones are active. All the displays and LEDs are clear, readable and centered in their bezels.
737 Pilot In Command Liveries
Other extras in the panel include a rather nice working weather radar - the switch for this is built into the EFIS control panel, below the range selector, in case you can't find it. You also get a TCAS, controlled from the usual position on the pedestal, a ground proximity warning system with aural and visual alerts, and co-pilot call-outs.
I'm new to the forum and would like help to 737 Pilot in Command. First time when I installed the hard disc the program worked perfectly. Yesterday I deleted 737 Pilot in Command for some reason.
If you start from cold and dark, you will have the joy of aligning the Inertial Reference System (IRS). If you elect to stay with the most realistic option, that means the plane can't be moved for at least ten minutes, but feelThere have made allowances for the fact that the average user's attention span is roughly nine minutes shorter than this and so you can reduce the alignment time using the configuration applet (-: The virtual cockpit follows the lines of the 2D panel and if you can use a control on one, you can use it on the other. As you can see from the screenshots, the standard of the graphics in the VC is as good as it is with the 2D panel.
Although using Mike's documentation will please experienced simmers a great deal, it will raise some problems for newbies. The trouble with addons of the complexity of 737 PIC is that you need two domains of knowledge to operate them - one about how real world planes are flown and one about how to use the simulation. Traditionally, high level simulations fix this with a tutorial flight coupled with a 'pull the stick back to go up' systems manual that explains in fine detail about how every single instrument and system works - but the 737 PIC manual dispenses with this in just six pages (by comparison the PMDG 737 has 82). The result is that when it comes to programming the CDU, you had better know how to program a CDU, because Mike only has just enough space to explain the basics, before he is onto how to get the bird off the ground. Beginners will face this lack of detail at every stage, and for example, explanations of how to calculate and enter the zero fuel weight and even what a cost index might be are completely lacking. To make matters worse, there is absolutely nothing about route programming - sure, this kind of stuff is burned into the brains of the space cadets, but I think it is unreasonable to expect the average simmer upgrading from the default Boeings to know it. It also lets a very good simulation indeed down, because substantial numbers of users are going to be completely floored by the almost total lack of information about how to use the panel to carry out Mike's excellent instructions.
The visual model is good, with plenty of detailing and all those dozens of liveries. feelThere have been fairly restrained about animations and moving parts, so that although you get all the expected stuff, only one of the doors appears to open, but then again, we are dealing with a simulation of flight here, not baggage handling. You do get some nice detailing in the flap and gear bays and for once the flap deployment timing appears to be on track; many FS planes drop flap in a fraction of the time their real world counterparts take, but this one does it like a lady. I played around with all the different versions and the frame rates on the 2D only panel versions were truly excellent and even the 'full' VC and everything else version wasn't bad, although they hovered in the low teens when maneuvering near buildings at complex airports and there was the occasional hesitation.
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The flight model is very 737-like - in particular, feelThere have got the rotation right and for once we are treated to an addon which actually feels as if it is flying off the ground, rather than suddenly coming unstuck from it. The handling in all the normal phases of flight was excellent, with none of the exaggerated tendency to skid in turns that curses so many FS airliners and the 737 flew well on approaches, both by hand and on the autopilot. The sound set was convincing and didn't exhibit any cycling - the sim feels and sounds like a 737.
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Verdict? A great sim, with a fantastic 2D panel, an inspired ops manual and more liveries than you can eat. The only downside, apart from the lack of a 2D first officer panel, is the lack of a cockpit manual to help get newbies up and running - as it is, you can get the plane in the air just by firewalling the throttles and dropping some flap, but to do misses out on 90% of the point of buying the package. Given better documentation the 737 would have picked up an AAA, but if you know how to program a CDU and have experience flying other sims of this type, the existing manual will be enough and I can unhesitatingly recommend the package. Good fun.
Andrew Herd[email protected]
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