Autopilot Issues

[Elvensmith 165]

Okay so I caved in and decided to re-purchase/reinstall. No shame in that, just practical considerations and I would rather be on the inside offering constructive feedback than outside making the occasional snarkey remark. As my trial and error last night took my total play time over two hours, that's perma sorted as well.

Anyhow to the question at hand, has anyone managed to get the AP working on those aircraft that has it fitted. There seems to be a lack of instructions or clarity as to how the system works, one of the panels has the various functions set out alongside the GPS console but no master switch I can see. On one of the twins (forget which) there was a master switch but appeared to ignore "Nav" when engaged (is there supposed to be a GPS mode switch as in FS9, FSX etc?) and the desired altitude showing "0" with no response from the adjacent dials, thus this did actually seem to engage but promptly set me on course for the ground.

As I noted previously this has to be done on the fly as you cannot experiment with the controls while the game is paused.

[Jim610 2]

The GPS Mode switch is the CDI button on the GPS.  Even if the panel doesn't show a GPS, Ctrl+2 brings one up in most panels.  Also not found an AP master switch but the Z key switches it on/off and depending which aircraft sometimes in HDG mode and sometimes you need to select the mode.  ALT logic seems well screwed but early days and never got VS mode to work.  Not got round to trying APP yet but if GPS CDI is in GPS the NAV mode works fine.

Hope that all makes sense!

[Chock 17,769]

I've been somewhat mystified by the autopilot in a few aircraft too, so I've generally resorted to manually handling the vertical part with trim/throttle and sticking purely to Z to engage it andd selecting a heading. I did manage to fly a B17F all the way from Manchester to Bilbao like that last night, although hilariously I had the landing gear collapse on touchdown, not sure if that was a random failure or what because the landing seemed quite gentle to me. Still, any landing you can walk away from eh? And as the video shows, that 17 might be on its belly, but is that thing on the centreline of the runway when it comes to a halt or what?!!:

 

[Elvensmith 165]

I'll explore this aspect a bit more later on this evening.

It's possible the autopilot isn't fully functional yet of course. At some point when it is (if DTG are reading this) a tutorial lesson would be beneficial, TBH of more use to the casual flyer than how to grapple with the controls on a twin engine plane down to one engine... :)

[Elvensmith 165]

Couldn't find a CDI button on the panel I was flying. ALT does kind of work but you need to either RMB/LMB click or mousewheel on the dial, same with heading use the mousewheel and squint at the tiny, tiny marker on the CDU to check the setting. This game is NOT eyesight friendly (which is where a crisp 2D panel would come in handy).

 

Also when you load a saved flight, autopilot is reset and off so you have to start again from scratch. I've submitted that one as a bug.

[johntcrooks 0]

since this sim is based on fsx i wish it had the functions of fsx   i like to be able to operate the autopilot to foillow the gps   set an altitude and have autopilot go to it change planes on the fly etc  i see fsx has a wider range of sim speeds  i have p3d ver 3.3 and it does everything fsx does plus some   it seems fsw is very limited  i also hate that you have to land perfectly to usually get credit for the flight

[Elvensmith 165]

I suspect that's why my flight time from Wick to Inverness never got credited.

[n4gix 4,947]

On ‎5‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 2:24 AM, Elvensmith said:

Couldn't find a CDI button on the panel I was flying.

CDI button is on the GPS. The autopilot however is pants...

[Paraffin 2,197]

4 hours ago, johntcrooks said:

since this sim is based on fsx i wish it had the functions of fsx   i like to be able to operate the autopilot to foillow the gps   set an altitude and have autopilot go to it change planes on the fly etc  

I don't know if this sim follows the same philosophy as XP, but I remember hearing complaints about autopilot functions like altitude capture missing on basic XP11 aircraft like the C172.

That's because you wouldn't normally find an altitude capture AP installed on that plane in the real world, just the basic AP functions. Not unless you spent so much on avionics upgrades that they were worth more than the plane.

If it's a plane that would normally have altitude capture as an AP feature, then yes, it should be in the simulation.

[fsxkitty 62]

For those of you who are still confused by the AP, someone wrote a nice guide on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=933473891

[n4gix 4,947]

That was a well presented guide. I've never used an STEC-55x with a remote panel before.