I finally bit the bullet and purchase the Boeing 777-200R from Flightfactor. I've been fiddling around with it for a week now and this is my first impression.

 

The 3D modeling of the plane is excellent, It's almost on the PMDG level but not quite. Some of the texture could be better. If you exit the cabin and travel around the plane, you will see the amount of details that was put in for something that most simmer will probably never see. It's a shame. During my first flight, I went to sit in first class and watch through the window as I fly by the Canadian rockies. I did come with a few liveries which looks great.

 

When you first load  up the plane, there is a menu on the top right corner that allows you to summon the ground services (GPU, Stairs, chokes etc...). There is an option to disable real time for the IRS alignment, custom failures, enable quick zoom (ezdock like per-determine view). It also includes a fuel calculator and utility to fuel the plain. This is where I experience my first quirk. The plane door has to be open before it allows to fuel the plane. So I had to set the door opening to manual, open the doors. You cannot close or quite the menu while the fuel is loading.  Unless you are an hardcore simmer, it's probably easier just to use X-plane fuel menu.

 

Plane initialization.

 

The plane comes with over 300 pages of documentation. they suggest you read through it first but I didn't. Already somehow familliar with the 777, I decided to take my chances. As I move to the upper panel using the quick zoom option, It slowly transition to panel but you cannot interrupt or move to a different position until the transition is completely done. If you don't, it will retry again to move to its final destination. That's very frustrating. You better set your quick view using x-plane own camera management and don't use quick zoom at all. None of the button on the panel are using the wheel mouse. That's fairly disappointing. You have to plan the mouse at an exact position to get an contextual menu. You do get used to it after a while but It's begging for a change.  Once, you got some of the external power hooked up, you can enable the middle screen sitting between the 2 FMC and get your checklist directly. It's a nice touch but its not interactive. So its up to you to make sure you went through it. I guess this is too appeal to the more hardcore crowd but a nice conformation as you go through each step would have been a nice touch.  You also have an PA announcement option. You can announce pre-recorded messages to your passenger. That's a great option.

 

Back to plane initialization. Its time to enter the FMC.  You can click on it and a 2D pop up or you can go to a browser and type in the IP address ot the pc running x-plane and access the FMC remotely. If you have an ipad lying around, you can use it to program your FMC. I generated my course using EFASS and entering the data was pretty straightforward. Thanks to some really good tutorial on YT, I got this part figure out pretty quick.  Time to start the engine, That was as painless as it can be, I was ready to taxi and head to my destination. 

 

Ran into some snafu

 

As I ready to take off, I did ran to some snafu. All my fault, I didn't read through all the docs and I got welcome pretty hard to reality. As I took off, I couldn't engage the Autopilot. Of to realize after a few hours, that I had the primary flight director disable. Pretty big deal. As I keep practicing my takes off, I realize the plane really needs an option to reset the plane in different state. When you respawn a plane, it loads up in the exact same state as before. If you had any type of failure, you would need to go back to X-plane 10 menu and reset all failure. I would have love a "load cold and dark state, taxi take off etc...". Either way, I got pretty good at running a quick and dirty checklist and try a few time, I got my FD embarrassing moment in the back of my mind and ready to fly,  I got a very smooth take off and I was already thinking : this is easy now. I got it. Turns out I was dead wrong. 30 minutes into my flight, I loose all my screen. Turns out I left "disc drive" switch on and It drained the battery in the plane. I was screwed.  As an Idiot, I went to the menu and click on GPU1 and GPU2, Of course all my screen came back but this would be an impossibility in a real plane. It's probably not intended to ever be able to do this.  I found it weird that  Flightfactor didn't block this after you leave the ground.

 

I didn't attempt to land the plane yet as I am still working through some of the quirk of this plane. So far, its a fairly complex plane that will keep me occupy for months. So if you are into a complex airliner, This is a very good plane to start with.

try the new VC TEXTURES from Mr.Pumper over at the .org, pretty amazing freeware.

Great post. Thanks very much for posting your thoughts on the 777.

try the new VC TEXTURES from Mr.Pumper over at the .org, pretty amazing freeware.

 

I seem to have quite a few issue with his textures. They look terrific but I am unable to start the plane normally now.

For me, everything seems to be perfectly modeled except for the 3d model which is far from perfect.

Thanks for review!!! Very good!