Solar Sailer

The Solar Sailer is a simulation of a futuristic bulk transport vehicle. When idle, its sails are translucent; however, for faster speeds, the sails turn opaque and give the solar sailer a tremendous boost in speed. The sailer flies on (according to the script) "data transmission beams" that send information to other parts of a local computer. These beams could conduct power surges if the data stream is too strong and could cause immobility and slowly derez the sailer. If a power surge is encountered, the pilot must switch to a different beam via a junction immediately or the sailer will derez.

Triple-I did all of the CGI shots featuring the solar sailer, except for one shot featuring one of the Sea of Simulation's bubbles hitting the data beam; that shot was done by MAGI. In TRON: Legacy, the sailer's appearance has undergone a radical redesign, with folding sails and being substantially larger. It is described as serving as a "freight train". The upper decks are little more than a narrow catwalk spanning the length of the ship, and stairs below reach to similar narrow passages in a cargo hold wrapped around the central data conduit.

Tron
The first appearance of the Solar Sailer in TRON is when it was rezzed into a hangar. Yori was one of the many female programs responsible for rezzing it.

After Tron received the data needed to destroy the MCP, Tron and Yori used the solar sailer to escape the game grid. Flynn (disguised as one of Sark's army members) hung on to the side edge of the sailer as Tron took out the other enemy programs. It wasn't until later that Tron found Flynn hanging on the side of the sailer and picked him up. The sailer encounterd a power surge, Flynn was able to redirect the beam to allow the ship to move to a different date beam.

As the solar sailer reached near the end of a canyon which was near to the MCP, it crashed into Sark's Carrier in an ambush and Tron fell off. Yori and Flynn hung on to what remained of the vessel as the wreckage was sucked into the Carrier's hangar. Soon afterward, before disembarking on his Escape Pod, after which his Carrier would be derezzed, Sark mentions catching another Simulator to return back to the Game Grid.

TRON: Legacy
In TRON: Legacy, the sailer's appearance has undergone a radical redesign, with folding sails and being substantially larger. It is described as serving as a "freight train". The upper decks are little more than a narrow catwalk spanning the length of the ship, and stairs below reach to similar narrow passages in a cargo hold wrapped around the central data conduit.

Flynn and his companions find an unmanned solar sailer preparing to depart from Tron City and heading towards their destination, the Portal. They stow away aboard the sailer, later to discover the sailer's cargo to be enslaved programs and its destination to be a carrier constructed by Clu.