767 Captain for FSX - Review By Jon Murchison

Pilots perspective by Scott Hickey

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Overview & Background

Captainsim. For many just the name of this developer  is sufficient for them to click the 'purchase' button on their website for whatever their latest release may be. With the Boeing 757 and more recently 727 releases under their belt and not forgetting what I consider to be the legendary C-130 series, Captainsim have become synonymous with quality and detail. Keeping with their recent Boeing theme Captainsim have now turned their attention to the 767-300ER and released 767 Captain under their Pro Line label. Released in August the 767 Base Pack (Currently V1.3 @ time of review) comes with an extensive list of features for what is initially the 767-300ER aircraft, but promises to expand and cover all the variants that Boeing have produced over the years. We will look into the specifics of the model, panel, sounds and systems as we go but here is a brief overview of what comes 'out of the box'. Due to the nature of this release the review is being split into two parts. Here we will explore the base pack and in Part 2 to be released a little later, we will look at the expansion models Captainsim is releasing over the coming weeks and months.

• The 767 external model comes with both winglet and non winglet versions and has 3 engine variants, those being Pratt & Whitney, General Electric and Rolls Royce.

• As with all other Captainsim aircraft special exterior animations are used extensively to expose portions of the aircraft we don't see under normal operational situations..

• The aircraft comes with a full high detail VC with many animations as well as a 2D panel.

• Similar to the 757 a passenger cabin is included however on the 767 the entire cabin has been modeled and this also has many special animations and features.

• Extensive manuals and documentation.

• 767 sound set

The Boeing 767 itself needs little introduction for most aviation enthusiasts, but a little background never goes amiss. The 767-300 came into being in 1983, one year after the smaller 200, as a replacement for the aging 707 and DC-8 fleets. The 767 had the added benefit of having a wider body, larger wing for increased altitude and utilized the more efficient high-bypass fan engines of the 747. The 767 has the added benefit of sharing the same cockpit that was in the smaller 757. The Captainsim model is the longer range 300ER aircraft and this first flew in 1986 after American Airlines placed an initial order for several of these. As most New Zealanders will know the 767-300ER has formed the backbone of Air New Zealand's international fleet over the last 20 years initially sharing this honor with the smaller 200. In more recent times the Air New Zealand 767 fleet has been undergoing the fitting of Aviation Partners blended winglets to reduce fuel burn by over 6%. The 767's days on the production line at Boeings Seattle plant are numbered as the 787 program evolves, but with close to a thousand still flying and 93 still on order as of August 2009, the 767 can quite rightly be considered a real success for Boeing and one of the pioneers in wide body aircraft design.

The download file itself is around 65MB and once the auto installer has completed, which takes only a few minutes, a couple of folders will have been added to FSX. The first is created in the simobjects/aircraft folder and this unpacks to be around 231MB. In here are the models, sounds and textures. 5 models are included, 2 with GE and 2 with PW engines featuring both the 3 and 5 door types and the 5 door RR engine model. 14 airline liveries across all three engine types are included with our region reasonably well represented with both the older Qantas and Australian liveries included. Air New Zealand is available as a separate download for both winglet and non winglet models as is the new Qantas livery. All 3 engine types have sound sets though I did note the PW folder was empty and was aliased to the GE set so I have to wonder why bother. I was impressed to see 3 separate .air files included suggesting that the variation in engine performance would be reflected with each model type.

In the main FSX folder itself a Captainsim folder is added and in this two further folders which contain the navigational data and also a few additional sounds, pre saved flights and the ACE utility. I also noted a folder called 'variants' which is there in preparation for the additional models yet to come that Captainsim have alluded too on their website. 767 Captain does not come with any manuals, instead a link is provided that then allows you to download 5 PDF Flight Manuals from the Captainsim website. This is a pick and mix approach but personally I downloaded all three, not that I have read them all in depth but clearly time and effort has gone into there preparation. Part 1 covers the aircraft in FSX and provides good detail on all the unique animations and provides a general overview of how to operate the aircraft in sim. Part 2 looks at the aircraft systems and is probably the most useful in regards how to operate the panel and how to integrate 2D components when in the VC. Part 3 provides details on procedures and this is followed by Part 4 covering the data behind the aircrafts flight performance. I kind of went brain dead with this section as its not my thing but the pilots and engineers among us would probably squeal in delight with them. The final manual covered the FMC and this was invaluable. Those familiar with the Captainsim 757 will already have experience with this as they will with the rest of the panel, so don't expect any surprises. For those who have not had experience in a heavy twin Manuals 2,3 and 5 will be your bible as you learn how to fly this highly automated aircraft, at least it can be highly automated if you study these guides.

Before I share my views and thoughts on the visual model, panel and flight characteristics of the 767, and Scott shares his thoughts from a pilots point of view, I want to deal with performance first. I have thought long and hard about this because in my view there is no doubt that in order to get the best from the Captainsim 767ER you need a good computer. The Captainsim website quotes the following minimum system requirements to run 767 Captain: PC with 1.5 GHz equivalent or higher processor, 256 MB of system RAM, 64 MB DirectX 9 compatible video card, 500 Mb of free space on the MS FS hard drive, Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2 or Vista, Microsoft® Flight Simulator X SP2 or Flight Simulator X Acceleration and Internet access (for installation/ re-installation). My personal view is those base specs are understated to say the least and I believe the average user is going to struggle to enjoy this package based on them. I say this because I run an Intel Quad Core 6600 clocked at 3.2 GHz, 2 gig ram and and an NVidea 8800GTX with 765MB ram and I noticed quite a big hit in my FPS. But, and it is a big but, the aircraft was flyable in all circumstances. Yes there were some delays in texture loads when I changed from external view to the VC, and yes there were some delay in texture loads when swapping from VC to external, but these were moments rather than minutes and I did choose to keep AI loaded and my scenery settings closer to the top end of the slider than the bottom.

Half way through the review process I upgraded to Windows 7 Professional 64bit and with a clean install I noticed a big improvement in the 767's performance. While comparisons are not ideal the best benchmark I can use is the PMDG 747-400X, and I use this because of the level of detail in the 747. Both aircraft performed around the same mark in the various scenery areas I chose to fly to and from with logic dictating the denser the scenery the slower the performance. The reality is 767 Captain is a highly detailed model with all the bells and whistles you could possibly want so be warned, if you don't want this level of detail or your computer can't realistically handle it and the performance requirements that go with it, don't buy this aircraft. Its that simple. I thought allot about this but when I stopped and considered what this aircraft looks like and has been achieved visually I had to ask myself why should FSX developers keep creating add-ons that cater to the lowest common denominator? This aircraft pushes technology and will push your system, but that's what you are buying from Captainsim and in my view anyone considering this aircraft needs to go into that purchase decision knowing. So I encourage Captainsim to never compromise on producing the level of detail they do, and you the end user, be realistic about your computer and your settings when you choose to buy an aircraft such as this. When it comes to 767's in FSX you have a choice, so dig around as this review is one opinion, nothing more.

I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time talking about the visual model because personally I feel a pictures says a thousand words, and the images below should say it all. I will say up front that if you are looking for me to provide a direct comparison to the 'other' 767 that is available for FSX then you are out of luck, you will need to read my review of that here. You should be able to see the differences for yourself. Out of the box 767 Captain comes with three engine types as I mentioned earlier being the GE, PW and RR powered variants. You'll also note the winglets. These are available as a feature you can turn on and off through the ACE utility that comes with the aircraft. Eye candy galore is probably the best way to describe the models, all look very real with intricate detail particularly in the flaps and gear. To my eye the shape looks accurate and I really enjoyed the bend in the wings under load. From an animation point of view everything appeared fluid and accurate.

One of the well known features of Captainsim models is the advanced animation options they come with. 767 Captain is no different in this regards . Using the animation control allows all aspects of the aircraft to be opened up whether this is the more standard passenger and cargo doors or more intricate areas of the aircraft such as engine, APU access doors or adding engine covers and dust excluders. The majority of these animations are fluid as opposed to things just suddenly appearing open. The depth of detail under the hood so to speak is one of the reasons the model chews through CPU cycles, regardless of whether you have these doors open or closed, FSX still renders everything and textures it regardless. The end result is certainly impressive. A comment about the night lighting and effects at this point. I found both the texture based lighting and effect providing lighting to be very effective. Window lights particularly where the light splash falls on the wings was a neat touch and in my view very effective. Rather than using texture based fuselage and wing lighting the 767 Captain uses effects, these provide a nice ambience without the often harsh lighting textures have and avoids the lights on when they are switched off scenario I have encountered with older models since the effect is linked to the light switches through xml. More and more developers are using effects for lighting and this certainly provides an overall better effect than textures any day, at least in my view.

Aircraft Panel & Systems

How Does She Fly? - Pilots Perspective by Scott Hickey

Strapping myself into the left hand seat I began to get ready for my first flight and I felt right at home in my 757, no a 767 that’s right. You notice instantly the great similarities between the 757 and the 767’s flight decks something which Boeing and now Captainsim have done well. I was however interesting by one thing initially, that being the airspeed indicator. It is the old analogue style (757 like) gauge. I have been onto the flight deck of a couple of Qantas 767 aircraft and viewing photos I know that every aircraft I have seen has the digital tape style airspeed indicator on the side of the PFD (this is the one featured in the Level-D 767). Now after a bit of research I have discovered that the analogue style is not unrealistic as 767’s have and do have them but I would have liked to see the option having the digital style gauge as it just feels a bit to 757ish to me, but that may just be a quirk of mine. Upon aligning the IRS units I was very disappointed and I say very because this bug was one I have had in the 757 since the beginning and it has still not been corrected. When you align the IRS it should not align unless you have told it where to align to, the way an IRS system (a very old system at that) works is by referencing you initial position in latitude and longitude and working out your present position based on that initial calculation. Now the 757 and now the 767 have this ability that the IRS will align in around a minute (to fast) without you even entering any coordinates into the FMC/CDU. While this does not affect the flying I am looking for realism and if other developers can do it and this has been an issue for years it begs allot of questions. But that aside the rest of the pre-flight and FMC initialisation process went without fault and the beautiful VC making it easy to perform this from the virtual cockpit, the only other thing I want to mention is while you tell the ACE aircraft configurator you want weights in pounds you still need to enter the ZFW in kilograms (I'm guessing it takes from FSX default weight settings).

Now to see how she flies. Pushback and start-up goes as you would expect although it would be nice to have a pushback utility as featured in other addons but no big deal. An oddity I did notice was when you switch the air-conditioning packs off there is no increase in cabin temperature but again something I can live without. Once again the virtual cockpit and cabin really shine I like to fly almost 100% from the virtual cockpit and this one there is just no reason to leave it and with all switches raised you can operate the aircraft totally from the VC. The takeoff roll could do with some FO callouts from the V speeds the FMC has calculated or at least the airspeed bugs could be operational as referring to the CDU unit on the roll is quite distracting.

It’s about now that in goes downhill in the flight dynamics sense, the autopilot is just awful. While 100% functional the turning ability of the aircraft is nothing close to what you would expect from this aircraft, headings over 30 degrees from the current track constantly overturn by 20-30 degrees as does L-Nav. Now while this doesn’t seem to be an issue in the cruse having the aircraft do this on the departure is very disappointing especially when I have had the same issues in the 757 and that just does not go down well with me at all. Now on a more positive note the aircraft hand flies well which is nice to do on visual days from that beautiful cockpit, but when in IMC out of a busy airport, essentially flying single pilot an autopilot which swings violently around the set heading for 30 seconds would defiantly spill the Champaign in business class. But back to the world of positive thoughts, the cruse is perfect and it flies the V-Nav and L-Nav path perfectly not to mention the addition of a weather radar has defiantly put this bird ahead as I don’t know of any other aircraft which has weather radar of this accuracy and realism, and it certainly makes avoiding those 30,000 CB’s easier. I have noticed that the V-Nav will turn off at level of at the cruse but this seems to have been corrected post SP1.3 as I have not had this happen since.

The approach goes to plan although again we have this swinging on set headings. I had a few issues with the autopilot capturing the ILS and glide slope at first where the aircraft would appear to be “lost” but again this issue seems to have been ironed out post SP1.2 and SP1.3 which is excellent. Overall Captainsim  have provided the flightsim community with another professional aircraft that looks and sounds the part, the comments I have made while some may think to be harsh I think are justified by the fact these are not new issues but the same ones I have encountered on the 757 which is a very similar add-on. However that aside while surprised at first about another 767, this offering from Captainsim has defiantly provided an accurate 767 simulation for 2009.