- Flight Factor Boeing 777 Worldliner Professional V12 Aircraft
- Flight Factor Boeing 777 Worldliner Professional V12 Price
Aircraft Update: Boeing 777 Worldliner Pro + Extended Pack V1.6 by Flightfactor/VMAX Flightfactor-VMAX have updated the Boeing 777 Worldliner Professional and the Extended Pack to v1.6. The biggest thing to note in this new version is that there has been another addition to the 'Extended Pack' of variants in the 777-200ER with the Pratt&Whitney. I've found a way to fix it, if you go into the FF777 Extended directory, you will see.acf files of all the aircraft (777-f, 777-200 etc), if you delete the.acf files that dont have 'x plane 11' in the name, then x plane will use the x plane.acf files instead. For example, delete 777-300ER.afc, and keep 777-300ER.xp11.acf.
The 777 is a large and heavy aircraft that often flies fully loaded. To ensure that the 777 can haul the mail, Boeing ensured that the aircraft has two powerful engines no matter who has manufactured them. In FlightFactor's rendition, except for the -200ER, all other variants are powered by two powerful GE90 engines. The -200ER sports the option of being powered by the Rolls Royce Trent 800 or the Pratt & Whitney PW4096. In real life, the -200ER can also be powered by GE engines but FlightFactor have decided to leave it out of their simulation. There's an in-game menu for this add-on that apart from switching engines, will also allow you to load fuel and passengers, manage aircraft doors, ground handling goodies and a few other options. While it works well most of the time, the menu may not properly annunciate capacity limits. Interestingly, the pushback action availed of from this menu calls for you to drive the tug yourself. Not bad, I'd say. What is weird, apart from not being able to open the cargo doors on the passenger variants, is that it is absolutely a must to open the R2 door and have the air-stairs available in order to load the aircraft. Contrarily, almost all the time, passenger boarding in real life is done from the L1 and L2 doors and most of the time using jetways.
Agile is the one adjective that will probably never be used to describe a 777 unless it is a scaled down RC model. The VMAX 777 behaves so and which means the developers have modeled the flight dynamics well. The aircraft have a slow and heavy feel to their controls particularly at high gross weights. Even then, they exhibit realistic stability and graceful movement. Characteristic tendencies of the 777 such as the development of a sharp pitch up moment when the flaps are extended from 5 to 15, the tendency to break the maneuvering speed limit when performing a high thrust takeoff with a light load and the rocket-speed rate of climb when nearly empty have been simulated very well. However, as the aircraft gains altitude, the same kind of performance shouldn't be observed. This isn't the case with this add-on which, even when heavily loaded, has no problem reaching the upper flight levels with excessive ease. As it turns out, this problem has something to do with turbofan bypass ratios not being set correctly. Perhaps that's why fuel burn doesn't feel like it's on the right mark and this is made evident by fuel consumption tending to be on the lower side.
What goes up must come down and the 777 is a handful to slow down in time for approach even in real life. The FMC not calculating and managing speed properly in this add-on often calls for some manual intervention from the pilot during descent to keep things under control. As I did so, I started to feel that the tendency of this aircraft to gain speed during descents may be a tad more than what is realistic. And that's when I discovered a quirk in the way the speed brake can be operated. If you have the speed brake control mapped to a joystick axis, then you're good. If not, I'm afraid you won't be able to finely adjust it with the mouse or your keyboard. Up, armed and fully extended are the only three positions that the lever can be put into with the keyboard and it won't really work with the mouse.
On the ground, the aircraft taxis at idle thrust a little too quickly even when moderately loaded. Note that the add-on doesn't feature taxi cameras for the -300ER and I'll let this one pass as it's quite difficult to simulate. Another quirk I observed is that the throttles don't respond at all to inputs in a narrow range of travel near the idle position. This makes setting a precise amount of low thrust for taxiing impossible. Certain engine parameters such as EGT and N2 always seem to be on the higher side all the time. Although the 777 handles well, engine parameters for all variants are in real need of a good amount of tweaking. And let's not forget that the fly-by-wire system is not at all simulated. My first few flights, or attempts at flight, were often cut short with a sudden and unexpected occurrence of a fuel leak and/or engine surging. Turned out that the X-Plane 11 failures system causes this and should be completely disabled. That's not the sole culprit. To have the most hassle-free experience with this add-on, one must also disable custom failures from the add-on's in-game menu.
One area where this add-on greatly disappoints is acoustics. The aircrafts' engines sound quite un-realistic and the quality of engine and ambient sounds is subpar. This applies to both the interior and exterior. Sans quality and realism, all sounds that are expected are there. GPWS warnings, cockpit alerts, button press sounds, APU noise, cockpit avionics ambience, passenger and cargo loading sounds are all there. Fancy some passenger announcements? Trigger them through one of the pages on the electronic checklist on the lower EICAS display.
Flight Factor Boeing 777 Worldliner Professional V12 Aircraft
With regards to performance impact, this add on is quite frame rate friendly and at times, I was getting frame rates as good as or even better than some of the default X-Plane 11 aircraft.
If you aren't already familiar with the 777 or the Boeing operational philosophy, the developers have done a good job of providing adequate and more importantly, relevant documentation for the add-on. Right off the bat, I was able to tell that the documents are very old Qatar Airways 777 manuals that have been adapted to the scope of the add-on's extent of simulation. There's an FCOM that has been trimmed to about half the size of the real one to ensure brevity and relevance. Similarly, portions of the FCTM along with normal procedures from the FCOM have been coalesced into the Pilot's Handbook. Hardcore simmers will also like the inclusion of non-normal procedures into the documentation suite. There are performance tables too but frankly, I didn't find them comprehensive enough to enable very realistic flight planning to the degree of accuracy what tools such as PFPX or Simbrief would offer. They are definitely good enough, however, to make a reasonable estimate of fuel required, V-speeds and cruising altitudes. From the in-sim menu, one can avail of a quick interactive tutorial that will walk you through taking the plane from a cold and dark to a ready to taxi state. The documentation that comes with this add-on is satisfactory on the whole and will certainly help even the novice simmer get up to speed with this add-on.
The Ramzzess and Philipp 777 has been around for about 6 years and over the course of time has been updated many times to ensure compatibility with X-Plane and to fix many issues. This is the sole 777 add-on for X-Plane at the time of writing this. FlightFactor, in recent times, have produced some excellent products such as the 757, 767 and A320. With those products, some of which even have full VR support, they're really setting the bar when it comes to quality and realism in the X-Plane sphere of things. Their 777 is in dire need of an update to bring it up to contemporary standards and expectations. Especially since it is the sole 777 add-on for X-Plane. There are rumors doing the rounds that a major update is in order. If this update does come about, I expect and hope that it will make this add-on an excellent one.
Flight Factor Boeing 777 Worldliner Professional V12 Price
What we have now is a decent simulation of the 777 for X-Plane 11. The add-on is functionally rich and moderately realistic. The product, in its current state, is calling out for an update to enhance aesthetics, re-tune engine performance and bring systems fidelity up to the standards FlightFactor have set for themselves with their other products. However, no issue with this add-on is going to significantly impact your effort to have uneventful virtual flights if you are a casual simmer and not overly concerned with operational realism and detail. If you're looking for a 777 add-on for X-Plane 11 then this is the only way to go right now and it's a decent and usable add-on despite all the flaws it has. If the update, as some claim is on the horizon, does come around then it will probably make this a great add-on. That's it for this review. Please feel free to reach out to me via comments if you any queries, suggestions or constructive criticism.
Rohan Nair
Developer's web site