LEVEL D 767-300 for FSX - Review By Jon Murchison

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Overview & Background

When FSX was released, amongst the noise about performance problems could also be heard the thank you’s from developers that model development could now be taken to a new level. The opportunity to add bump maps and advanced texture effects through speculative layers are all new toys developers have to play with. it must be acknowledged that people would never appreciate these new features as long as they struggled to get decent performance, but with the introduction of SP1, things have changed.

Level D first released the 767-300 model for FS2004 and it set a new benchmark for detail and quality. As soon as FSX was launched the question was asked, as it was off all payware add-on developers, when will it be released for FSX. Well, the wait is over, and Level D has delivered.

The version reviewed here is the download version from Flight 1, which comes with 3 models that feature the GE, PW and RR engine versions, along with the extensive PDF Operations manual (190+ pages). I had no problems installing the package, but did find that the latest version of FSUIPC by Pete Dowson for SP1 was needed to fix an initial error notice I got. We will look at the visual model, the panel and systems, how she fly’s, Sound, Multiplayer potential, Documentation and finally performance in FSX. We have tried to include as many images as possible, none have been edited other than resizing and cropping. The rig I have running FSX is as follows:

• NEC H7101k running an Intel® Pentium® D Processor 820 (2.80GHz, 2X1M L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB),
• 2GB/533MHz DDR2 (4 X 512MB)
• 200Gb SATA HD (7200 RPM)
• MSI 7900GTO (512MB) graphics card
• Sony wide screen LDV TV

While the external look does not differ greatly, if at all from its FS2004 cousin, it does incorporate the new texture layers which allow effects such as bloom and bump maps to be fully realized. Having studied many photos of the 767 to get a comparison, I wasn’t able to find anything in the visual model that made this anything other than ‘as real as it gets’.  Level D have, in this reviewer’s opinion, captured almost perfectly the shape and grace of this aircraft. Now if you wanted to be able to see the third rivet from the left next to the second emergency exit on the port side, then you may be disappointed….maybe, but in essence this IS the Boeing 767-300. Looking at this second set of screenshots you can see what I mean.

To fully appreciate the work put into the 763 you need to get up close, the detail is quite extraordinary, which to be fair we would expect from Level D. To assist in this review we enlisted the help of ‘Review Man’, who is better known as ‘Frank’. Frank is our ARNZ X avatar in the Flightsim world that can go places and interact with scenery and aircraft in ways we could not normally do. He also allows us to demonstrate the scale of things we are reviewing, and give us the 'on the ground' perspective often lacking. We sent him off to take a close look at the 767-300 and send us back some images. Here they are.

A word here about lighting effects. With this version of the aircraft every light has a switch, gone are the days when pressing the 'L' key turned everything on and off. Its great to see this level of detail, and the external lighting effects work very well. I really enjoyed the flight deck ambience lighting you can turn on and off leaving the panel bathed in its own glow, and allowing the back lighting on things such as the FMC to come through nicely. It certainly adds a dimension to night flying. The great thing is these same effects in the VC apply to the 2D panel as well, so you don't suddenly get the FMC appearing fully lit in 2D view when your VC FMC is dark.

Aircraft Panel & Systems

I’m not a pilot; I just wanted to set that straight up front. I have to say I struggled for the first hour with this aircraft as I sat firmly on the ground. It took all my will power to resist hitting slew to get airborne! My problem was I couldn’t start engine two. I clicked this and I checked that, I made sure I had fuel flowing, engine one was fine but unless I wanted to taxi in circles it wasn’t much use to me. The FMC dazzled me but confused me at the same time. I was a mess people! Begrudgingly I opened the manual, and within 3 minutes both engines were running smoothly, and I was setting up in take-off configuration.

The lesson for me was this aircraft deserves to be given its due, and actually have some time taken to understand how the systems and panel works. Level D have taken the time to model an excellent VC and create functionality within the flight deck that is actually pretty awesome. I did note some of the text on the VC on the overhead panel was blurred which I found difficult at times. The 2D panel works well and I found myself going between that and the VC throughout my flying time. I’m not a ‘read the manual’ person, I want to jump in and fly!! In this case the manual was well laid out and the checklists, which were the only bit I printed out, gave me enough information to work through the procedures I needed to get going.

Once I was in the air the AP was straight forward enough to set up an altitude and heading and then leave the aircraft to fly itself while I played with the FMC. This is the first time I have played with an FMC, even though I have got other aircraft that have them. I was quite surprised how easily I could input a flight plan and get things going. No doubt the subtlety of the thing will take some time, SIDS and STARS are still a mystery, but with time I’ll get those sorted. The point I am trying to make is the panel is excellent. I was able to find my way around quite easily, the clickable points in the 2D panel to open the overhead, FMC, throttle quadrant, radios and AP were well placed, and the ability to change your view position in the VC, common in FSX default aircraft, was well implemented meaning I could quickly move between stations as I needed to. I also found the comm's between the flight deck and ground, the background ATC chatter during flight and the cabin announcements at appropriate times during the flight to add to the overall sense of realism. The ability to also have support via a co-pilot, or not depending on your preferences, added another level to the experience. These neat touches certainly set a bench-mark for others to follow.

How Does She Fly?

We asked Scott Hickey, a real world trainee pilot based in Auckland who has 40 hours flying the Grumman American AA-1C Lynx amongst others, to tell us what his impressions were of the Level D 763 from a pilots perspective.

The Level-D 767 can be flown manually; I for one find some other aircraft hard to fly for long periods with out the aid of the auto pilot, which can be a problem when Airlines suggest that YOU fly it up as high as 15,000 feet. The 767 has a good feeling of stability under almost any circumstances and the effect of turbulence is simulated well on this model.

The FMC / CDU links well to the Autopilot and the use of L-Nav and V-Nav is realistic and straight forward to use. The Autopilot also follows the FMC route well and there is no straying off course at waypoint turns, providing you don’t make them to tight.

The 767 from Level D is modeled with 3 engine variants (GE, PW, RR) and personally I can not tell much difference between them, in my opinion it would take someone with experience with a real 763 to be able to distinguish well between them.

Multiplayer Potential & Missions

One of the other exciting aspects of the Level D 767-300 is its fully functional as a shared aircraft. A mate and myself spent some time in the traffic pattern out of Auckland Airport (NZAA) during a multiplayer session. The aircraft performed well in the multiplayer environment, and when combined with TrackIR made the emersion factor increase dramatically. With the install also comes 8 missions designed to introduce you to the aircraft, give you some practical flying experience and also when you think you know what you are doing, present you with failures that will test your skills. These missions are a neat touch and add further depth.

Performance in FSX

And so to probably the most important question for many, how does she perform? When I first saw this aircraft had been released my initial reaction was ‘slideshow’. I was wrong.

I found FPS wise the Level D 767-300 sits around the same mark as the default FSX Boeing 747-400. Now lets be clear, there are variations within this no doubt, and if you struggle to run FSX now the Level D 767-300 won’t improve performance that’s for sure. I found my FPS ranged from a low of 9 through to 50 odd, depending on where I was. Here are some shots taken at NZAA, with settings as follows: Autogen set to max, water 2x.low, clear weather and traffic set to 60%. We start close, zoom 1.00, zoom out to 1.50 and then add a traffic window. Throughout we lost about 5 FPS, so given we started at 20+ I personally consider that quite good for my rig.

The VC takes more resource as you would expect given the detail and functionality, but not to the point it was unusable.  My system stuttered a few times, mostly because I wanted to flick between views too quickly for the machine to keep up. As mentioned in Multiplayer, I used TrackIR and found the range of movement smooth with no noticeable performance hit, not did other aircraft in the session create problems.