Boeing vs. Airbus – Part 2 Level-D Simulations Boeing 767 Page 8

By SimHQ on May 3, 2005 in _air4, hide

The beautiful LD767 in the landing configuration.

At 1500 feet radar altitude the autopilot senses that conditions have been met to allow for auto-land capability and the green LAND 3 light illuminates so I sit back and stir my coffee.

The aircraft tracks flawlessly down the ILS staying precisely on the localizer and glide-path. The 150 knot FMS suggested full flap Vref speed is maintained by the auto-throttles all the way in from the final approach fix. As the aircraft crosses the threshold the FLARE and IDLE modes kick in and the throttles are closed as the pitch attitude is increased referencing the radar altitude.

As the wheel gently kiss the runway the auto-pilot enters ROLLOUT mode and tracks the center-line down the runway. I found the aircraft started veering slightly to the right halfway through the rollout so I disconnected the auto-pilot and applied some corrective rudder to get us back to the middle of the runway.

Upon touchdown the speedbrakes automatically deploy but I didn’t arm the auto-brakes so I apply manual braking and deploy the thrust reverses.

Welcome to Boston!

As we taxi in to the cargo ramp I stow the speedbrakes and retract the flaps. Upon parking we fire up the APU and go through the shut-down checklists. Opening the cargo doors the rumor has it we are delivering a load of Yankees hats! What a crazy world.

The Level-D Boeing 767 is quite simply an astonishing piece of software. They have scored a huge hit and deserve high praise for the quality and depth of this add-on. The panels are masterpieces and the external model and attention to detail are obvious (even the APU door opens and closes!). As with the SSW Airbus I’ve only just glossed over the surface of the LD767 because there are a ton of features that either I haven’t learned, discovered or just plain don’t have the room to mention. For instance, there is a ram air turbine that deploys automatically in the event of a dual flameout. Another incredible feature is that Level-D has built in a failures module that allows users to set conditions for things such as power plant failures, flight control malfunctions, hydraulic, electric, and pneumatic failures and more! Users can set up failures then hide the failure points so that other users won’t know when the failures are coming.

Coupled with the voice selections, the active First Officer, cabin crew and ground crew along with countless other extra features and settings, the LD767 offers way beyond what would be considered “normal” value. With any project as ambitious as modeling a realistic and detailed 767 there will be bugs. Browsing the Level-D forums it is clear to me that when bugs are found and reported the Level-D team takes note and plans corrective action. To tell you the truth though, I have not seen any bugs at all in any of my flights. Now perhaps a real 767 pilot can spot things that I just don’t have the knowledge to recognize, but for me every aspect of the LD767 performed flawlessly (once the “pause on task switch” was disabled).

The documentation is excellent and the inclusion of a great table of contents saved me countless hours of paging through reams of information trying to find what I was looking for. Logical sequencing of the material and a super tutorial made learning how to fly the LD767 a simple matter of following the steps outlined.

Coming tomorrow: Boeing vs. Airbus Part III: Phoenix Simulation Software Airbus A319/20/21

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