I been having autopilot issues with the plane either going up or going down when I turn off autopilot. I really think this issue should be looked into. It may have something to do with trim, but is this really realistic for real aircraft especially airliners?This is what I do, I set autopilot for 10000ft at 250kts and either turn on autopilot and the plane seems to go down a bit and re-ajusts to go the altitude I tell it to. I then proceed with my climb and it is normal.I do the reverse as I am getting ready to land I manually take it over at about 10000 sometimes 5000 but the result is the same. I click off airspeed first which I thought contributed to the climb and that still doesn't help when I turn off the autopilot to manually decend to land the plane.Some planes do it more severely than others though so I am not sure if it is fs or the flight dynamics of the aircraft. I just wish that fs2004 had similar flight handling to fs2002. How would I change this so that the aircraft will stay in the same attitude as when I switch it off, or is this not realistic in real aircraft?I think if flight simmers start "whinning" the old saying the squeaky wheel will get the oil MSFS will be patched to fix this. However I guess that could go the other way and pull the plug on the flight sim arena altogether which wouldn't be good at all, but at least we will know that Microsoft is a fly by night company if that is the case. After all I think I have heard on the forums that Microsoft does look here and flightsimnetwork forums. I guess I wish msfs would stay with what works in previous versions and just addon new realistic changes without effecting other things such as flight dynamics.With that said I hope there will be a work around or future improvements to fix the issue. I wonder how many have these issues or am I the only one. Any info would be appreciated.Thank You,

>I been having autopilot issues with the plane either going up>or going down when I turn off autopilot. I really think this>issue should be looked into. It may have something to do with>trim, but is this really realistic for real aircraft>especially airliners?>I'd say it's definately "trim", as I don't have this problem with the GA aircraft, nor the 737 that I just tried. I trimmed before setting on auto-pilot, and then reset the A/P for both climb and descent. When turning the auto-pilot off, only a slight re-trim was required. Nothing was abrupt as far as airplane behavior goes.In a real plane, you'll be trimming quite often. I also trim very often with this simulation because what I see on the screen translates into an actual "feel" of trim forces through my joystick. But if you're not use to the real thing, it can easily be neglected in the simulation. I'd say your auto-pilot is fighting an un-trimmed airplane & then pitches up or down when it's turned off. Auto-pilots on real planes that I'm familier with; can fight an out of trim airplane, buzzer and or light for out of trim, or actually re-trim the out of trim condition. As to real commercial airliners...........?????L.Adamson

Trim is definately a factor on my GA's aircrafts autopilot. It appears it is also on the bigger aircraft although I have no personal experience there. In icing conditions-the trim/autopilot has been a factor causing the recommendation that the autopilot not be used in such conditions.Sounds like this could be your factor from a page I found on the web:On F100 and A300 aircraft with the autopilot engaged in certain flight envelopes, pilot elevator input forces are sensed as unwanted inputs and are trimmed out by the autopilot. No force disconnects are implemented, and autopilot trim in the opposite direction of input is not inhibited as on some Boeing aircraft, for example. This has resulted in events that were perceived or described by pilots as runaway trim. For example, the pilot of an F100 aircraft did not disengage the autopilot when initiating a visual approach, but believed he had. Stab trim then moved to both full nose-up and full nose-down positions in response to elevator inputs and configuration changes. The autopilot was attempting to maintain the last target selected on the MCP, which was altitude hold. This sequence ended when torque forces applied to the manual trim wheel by the PNF were sensed as a fault, disengaging the autopilot. Importantly, the pilots believed the autopilot to have been disengaged throughout the maneuver. A similar event resulted in an A300 accident at Nagoya, Japan, when the FO/PF engaged TOGA mode, but attempted to stay on the glide slope with forward elevator pressure. Nearly full nose-up trim was obtained as the autopilot sought go-around pitch. The aircraft eventually pitched into stall attitude when the autopilot was disengaged, go-around thrust applied, and flaps retracted. In both of these events, the pilots expected action counter to the underlying software design, though the modes engaged were annunciated on the FMA. The A300 has been modified since the accident so that high control column force will disconnect the autopilot.A lot of people "whined" about the wing leveler also-too bad when this happens. Increased reality I think is always desirable-just because fs2000/2002 had it doesn't mean it was right! :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Now my question is how to trim the aircraft properly and how to tell if it is or not before I switch on the ap. Some panels have the elevators button and some thirdparty panels don't or are hard to find. So how can I tell? Like I said I was use to the old and I thought the ap did it automatically or I did it and didn't have trouble until I used this one. Also I saw there was a file for a yaw damper to fix it so that fs2004 would work like fs2000 and 2002. Would this help me?

>Now my question is how to trim the aircraft properly and how>to tell if it is or not before I switch on the ap. For trim, I have two buttons (up/down) on my joystick, which are set in the assignments menu under control settings. As to trimming, it's what I see on the screen that ends up like a "force" on my joystick ( in addition to the spring); but that's kind of a mind trick. If I begin to release pressure slightly on the joystick & see the nose of the aircraft moving up or down in relation to the horizon, then I trim some more. The nose should "stay" at a set point above, below, or on the horizon when trimmed properly. And that depends whether it's a climb, descent, or level flight. What it amounts to, is that the force will somewhat resemble the trimming forces in a real aircraft, and I trim automatically without thinking about it ...... much.L.Adamson

Now you have hit on one of my personal whines! We need better control devices for our sim-imho the sim has gone light years beyond what current control devices offer. The trim and sense of trim is poor-and that is a huge aspect of real flight.Trim, control forces, which ultimately give the "feel" of an aircraft are sorely missing imho. What we need is a yoke that provides a force feedback of true forces-not the game like bounces etc. the present ones provide but true control forces along with a trim which reacts correctly. I feel that the immersion,illusion, and flight models can't really progress much more until the response one actually feels starts to match reality a little better.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

>We need better control devices for our sim-imho the sim has>gone light years beyond what current control devices offer.>The trim and sense of trim is poor-and that is a huge aspect>of real flight.I get a "respectable" sense of trim from my eyes, however if the screen goes blank, there is no sense what so ever. >>Trim, control forces, which ultimately give the "feel" of an>aircraft are sorely missing imho. What we need is a yoke that>provides a force feedback of true forces-not the game like>bounces etc. the present ones provide but true control forces>along with a trim which reacts correctly. I feel that the>immersion,illusion, and flight models can't really progress>much more until the response one actually feels starts to>match reality a little better.Would be okay, then we could simulate lift forces on the stick when building up speed in ground effect............ among other forces

okay, but what about keyboard flying? I know you may laugh but I don't have a yoke or a joystick with fs, I use my numerical keypad to fly the plane. I have been thinking about getting one but just have gone out to get it yet so I have been using the keypad well since fs2 using the sublogic flight simulator. Thanks for the info though.Also new subject now.Have any of you had this problem? it happened a bunch last early October and it happened again tonight flying my Kingair 350 from Orange County to Palomar airport with Megascenery which was very blurry when I landed using extended textures. I was testing the speed and how much it would blurr with the Kingair 350.I landed and stopped Sound was fine while I landed. I used spot view to view my aicraft but I hadn't had any sound all of a sudden. So I jumped back into the cockpit still no sound, tried taking off and the framerates were about 1 per second. Now when I turned the sound off it was fluid again, turned it back on even though there wasn't any sound it was back to 1 frame per second again. I had to restart the computer to get back to normal again. Test ran it using other planes no problems so far but why does this happen?The only things that could have contributed to the problem was 1. I think I forgot to disable my virus-scan.2. I changed the time of day while I was in flight but never had this problem before doing this so I am not sure if this is the problem.3. I installed Johns new cirrus overcast layer today. It ran flawlessly all afternoon. It could have caused this but again I really not sure because I have changed textures for clouds and water without problems.Sorry to be the bear of bad news. I guess some of us run this new fs flawlessly and others seem to have some trouble with unexpected occurances.

Kurt,FS2004 is not really suitabkle for flying without a joystick or some kind of control device, you really should get one otherwise it's a bit unrealistic to complain about control problems! As for the trim problem it's really quite simple - ensure the aircraft is in trim before you engage the autopilot in FS (or in real-world flying, for that matter) and there shuoold be little or no pitch moment when you later disengage. You need to separate in your mind the pitch control inputs on your keyboard for elevator and the pitch control inputs for elevator trim.As for the sound problem, as soon as you touch down you engage all the additional sounds has for ground handling and it is simply overloadfing your computer. What are your system specs as it begins to sound like you might be using a system that needs updating, either hardware or driver software?Allcott

HiHavig read through this thread I can only say you really need to get a joystick or other flight controller.Search for the post Joystick Heaven for more insights on this.You really cant fly without one and keyboard flying is so unrealistic that when you do get a stick you'll wonder why you hadn't before now.Wycliffe

I'm not so sure about the progress in FM's bit but I agree 100% on the hardware side. We're long overdue for a stick or yoke that replicates the forces and trim effects that one gets in the real thing. The guy who comes up with one that works well at a reasonable price will be able to quit their day job for sure.........TonyDigital-Flight

Is the aircraft in a steady state condition when you when you disengage ALT? The reason I ask this is that the autopilot seems to work in pitch by changing trim (watch the trim indicator) and that takes time. If trim is way off when you engage ALT it will take a while for the autopilot trim adjustment to become effective. You can sometimes see this if trim is set too far to the nose down side and you try to engage ALT after beginning a manual climbout. ONce you release stick pressure the aircraft will pitch down and if you're too low you'll hit the ground before the autopilot can adjust the trim enough to get you climbing again. Once you reach your target altitude on a descent you need to give the autopilot time to trim out for level flight. Wait for both pitch and speed to stabilize before disengaging ALT and you shouldn't have any problems as the autopilot will have trimmed out for level flight.TonyDigital-Flight

Well I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with 2.2-2.4ghz. Pentium 4Win XP pro120g harddrive1G of Ram64mb Nividia Geforce 3 ti-500 cardTHX technology with turdlebeach sound cardI have had this system for about 1 1/4 year so I guess my videocard really needs to be replaced because it doesn't operate Megascenery well at all with the blurries that I have. As for regular scenery it seems to be fine.

Well I have a pretty good joystick (Saitek Cyborg Evo) about $40 bucks to start.However, I barely touch it except when I'm making turns or flying GA aircraft on a joyride somewhere. Whenever you take-off or are on final approach you should be set up so that you can take your hands off the joystick.A lot of times on final I find myself using the keypad to simply trim the airplane. I also have some trim features in the joystick, but regardless of that or not, don't under estimate keypad trim flying. Half of the time the joystick should be centered and still.