First time you fire up 767 PIC, the panel looks like this. To the better, the windows can be resized, and trough enlarging the overhead, and FMC, you can make PIC look really good. Without any electricity switched on, the 767-panel is dark and cold. Worth noticing is that Patric, reworked his overhead - left window frame has been removed, and the middle is moved a little over to the right. Here is the battery and the AC/DC bus switched on trough External Power. The IRS coordinates have been entered in the FMC (can also be done trough the overhead panel), and EADI and EHSI starts to align. And here, the IRS alignment is finished. A process that takes ten minutes. Just as in real life. EADI and EHSI lights up, and airports, fix, and waypoints is visible trough MAP-selection in EHSI. Cockpit Preparation Checklist is ready. On the Overhead-console the most important functions have been activated, and the aircraft waits for Final Preparation. The Throttle quadrant on the 767. Electronic Engine Controls are switched on, and Fuel control Switches is in Cut-off mode. Almost everything on the console can be clicked and adjusted... The RTE pages in FMC. Here, a flight between EDDM and ENGM have been punched in. Trough feed-in the jet-ways on the left hand side, the fix and waypoints shows up automatically in the LEGS page. You need a good database though, if these functions shall work perfect. The PERF INIT pages in FMC. Here you put in the aircrafts ZFW (Zero Fuel Weight), reserve fuel, cruising altitude and flaps configuration. The FMC afterwards calculates the V-speeds, Maximum- and Optimum, Altitude T/C and T/D values, and more... Here a 49 degree Derated Takeoff has been set. For the update that Wilco Publishing released a couple of weeks ago, a working FIX page was also implemented. Here has EDDM been put in as FIX, and two Distance Entries been set to 2nm and 10nm (see the rings in EHSI) It is possible to program a stream of failures, that might occur to the 767. Either you choose what failures you want, or you can let the program handle this randomly.

It is being described in Flightsim circles as the most advanced panel ever made. Everyone seems to cherish it, and no one seems to go on without it. But what does it really look like? And what is it that makes Eric Ernsts 767 pilot In Command such a success?

One evening Patric Moreau and Stein Andersen went trough their impressions. To judge by their conversation, 767 PIC seems to be a package that stretches just a little bit longer...

Patric:
We have both had 767 PIC since its release in the beginning of February. What where your first impressions of this package?

Stein:
Short speaking I was impressed by the panel, here is everything worth simulating, and still some more. Especially by the AFDS (Automatic Flight Director System) and the FMC (Flight Management Computer). The AFDS works exactly as in the real plane. I spent two days just reading the approx. 200 pages thick manuals, before I even could get inside the cockpit and start firing up those systems.

Patric:
I felt the same thing, and as you I spent a few days just reading the manuals. Even though I have had Eric Ernst 757/767 panel for FS 98 (757ee7.zip), and was pretty comfortable with that pretty advanced panel, but there where even more functions that showed up in PIC. And above everything I was surprised over all the functions needed to be entered, like the IRS (Inertial Reference System) coordinates, to get EHSI and EADI to work. Not to mention the FMC... At that moment in time, it seemed Eric Ernst and his team has moved several steps beyond...

Stein:
Yes, this is something you can really call a whole new generation of panels. The IRS setting came as a little bomb.
The Overhead panel are also one of the most advanced we have seen. IRS have been mentioned, hydraulic and electrical is also very well simulated. Here you really have to read your manual to understand the systems, it's not just get in and fly. That would simpleten not work.

Patric:
Eric Ernst have as we know a special relation to the 767, he works as an 757/767 First Officer for American Airlines, and his father was a 767 Captain for the same Airline.
In version 7 for FS98, he was at the time stationed as a Saab 340 Captain for AA´s subsidiary American Eagle. And in some way you can say this is mirrored in PIC as well. The first thing that came to mind when I saw PIC, was that the Failures part seemed to have been made by a guy that really knew the insides and outsides of all those systems... And when I mean failures, I talk about something as far away from default failures as you can get... Here we're almost talking about the real thing, or what do you say?

Stein:
It could look like a check-ride in a simulator, yes. When hydraulic failure occur, or the flaps does not come down, or when stabilizers start to wander off by themselves. Engine fire on takeoff, tires exploding. An electric fault, and half the plane become "dead". This has never before been done in FS, and when its been done, its been done very well. Again you have to act as a real pilot to solve all the approx. 80 faults that might occur.

Patric:
That leads us in on the patch as well. There where a patch released a few weeks ago, that upgraded PIC to version 1.10. One of the things I really liked with this patch was that you could select how often a hydraulic failure should occur, and what types of failure you wanted to have. Right now I have the electrical and hydraulic failures set to "once a month", which does not mean that it happens every month. To me it has now been six weeks without any failures occurring at all. And that is what is nice up there in the sky. You stay concentrated in a way you've never before had to be. . And you keep reading Non-Normal Checklists as bed time literature before you fall asleep...
But I would like to hear your impressions of the FMC, how do you think it works?

Stein:
After installing the patch, I'm very pleased of it. Among other things we got a FIX page that are of very good help, D-TO (Derated Takeoff) works as it should. A lot of other improvements as well. To many to mention here. If I have to put the finger on something, it has to be the database. I would like to see some updates that works, many people have tried to bring in updated AIRAC, with more or less luck. The original database lacks most SID and STAR, and even more airways. But I am impressed. It contains the system logic, and almost every system functions as in the real aircraft. It became as to learn to fly from A to B all over again.

Patric:
Yes, I have to agree, it is the one big argument I have against the add-on. The database for the FMC is identical to the one that came with FS2000, it means that it's about 4-5 years old, and because of that misses out on a lot of European jet ways, and a lot of fixes. It has been made quite a few attempt to better this one on a freeware basis. Among others, the update from Andi Guther and Richard Stefan, and yes it has become better. But there are still a lot missing, I myself struggle with a mix from many sources...
The pros are that you've got an FMC that works 90% up to the real one. And I really believe that in this case Wilco Publishing is living up to its "reputation", that it is so realistic that you can use it for pilot training. I still get as surprised every time I use it. It is so realistic... And this have to count for it all, even the plane (the .AIR file) behaves in the way you expect it to.

Stein:
The flight characteristics are clearly one of the highpoints in this add-on. You really get the feeling of flying an airliner. The .AIR-file seems to work accordingly with the FMC. If the FMC tells you that the maximum height is 37000 feet, it is 37000 feet, the aircraft simply does not climb higher. We also learned quite a bit about the flight characteristics in this AIR-file. Speed-brakes as an example is not half as effective as you previously got the impression of. The same thing can be said about the brakes.

Patric:
Exactly... It was a lot that came as a surprise in that "negative" way... That spoilers did not prove as effective as you thought, and that the brakes are pretty ineffective. And it is just this kind of detail that give PIC, that realistic feel you have been waiting for so long. Trim is also one of those things you get surprised over in the beginning...
I have had some e-mail contact with Eric Ernst trough the years - not in that way that I consider myself to be one of his personal friends... We have at least had some contact resonating on the 767. Just after I got PIC in my hands, I sent him an e-mail just to hear what he thought about this version. He thought the realism were "uncanny"...
And I will really agree on that. My only fear right now is that it won't be compatible with FS2002. What a nerve wrecking experience, that would be, if you have to wait a year for an update...
Well, they made the add-on for FS2000, so it would be a little strange if we started to worry about an FS-version that has not yet been released... Anyway I give it 9 out of 10 possible control towers! The only thing that prevents me from giving it 10 towers, is that database...

Stein:
I will go down a little. 8.5. Mainly because of the jump-seat view. Since that add-on has everything else, I think it should have a proper viewpoint.

Patric:
I don't think it's that of a problem with jump-seat... Sure, the instruments are a little to the left, but that can easily be compensated for, by moving the monitor a little to the right.

© Patric Moreau
Assistant Editor, FlightSim.No

© Stein Andersen
Reviewer, FlightSim.No

© Arnfinn Trones
Translator, FlightSim.No

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