Are the autopilots broken or are they more realistic?

The autopilot seems to work well for me. To implement FLC you just have to select a speed lower than the present, there being no auto throttle the speed is controlled by pitch and for the pitch to be increased speed needs to be traded off.

So are people reporting broken autopilots expecting them to work like on default FSX aircraft?

Where you select alt and up (or down) it went with a default VS rate to the selected altitude. Whereas Alt is now is hold current altitude and in order to go to the desired alt you have to use VS  or FLC (as noted above).

What do other experienced simmers think?

They are broken in the sense that only the basic functionality are working. Now if this is done on purpose or not I have no clue. Room for a future 'autopilot pilot fix' by a 3rd party payware ? I don't know. But you can still use the AP to get from one airport to another. Your millage may vary.  

14 minutes ago, Cmcollazo71 said:

Are the autopilots broken or are they more realistic?

...

Where you select alt and up (or down) it went with a default VS rate to the selected altitude. Whereas Alt is now is hold current altitude and in order to go to the desired alt you have to use VS  or FLC (as noted above).

What do other experienced simmers think?

The MSFS autopilots are more realistic, but they also are still somewhat buggy..

The FSX notion of just changing the target altitude and the airplane will follow, is not the way most real world autopilots work.  But, lets not generalize too much... there are many different real autopilots, and they DO NOT all operate the same.  🙂

That is why autopilots come with published Pilot's Guides, and pilots receive type training on new airplanes. 😉

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by Bert Pieke

36 minutes ago, Cmcollazo71 said:

Are the autopilots broken or are they more realistic?

The autopilot seems to work well for me. To implement FLC you just have to select a speed lower than the present, there being no auto throttle the speed is controlled by pitch and for the pitch to be increased speed needs to be traded off.

So are people reporting broken autopilots expecting them to work like on default FSX aircraft?

Where you select alt and up (or down) it went with a default VS rate to the selected altitude. Whereas Alt is now is hold current altitude and in order to go to the desired alt you have to use VS  or FLC (as noted above).

What do other experienced simmers think?

There definitely is something “off” with the autopilots, saying that I did do a 600 mile flight yesterday and the autopilot got me from departure to about 80 miles to my destination with no issues..the issue I did run into was I hit some ice and lost all altitude which was expected, so I disarmed the autopilot to recover, when I went to re-arm, it was Then completely broken. So not sure what exactly happens but nothing I could do would fix it at that point. 

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by flyinpilot212121
I don’t know my left from my right!!!

The G1000 autopilot for me on the Cessna 172 acts really weird if I pause the sim, or increase the sim rate. 

One time when I paused the game (with the "Pause" key), when I unpaused it, the plane's pitch tilted way up into the sky (like a 70 degree upward pitch).  Also, the trim also seemed to be set to point 70 degrees into the sky.  I assume this is some bug with the autopilot and pause feature?

When I increase the sim rate, the autopilot also does weird things, including an increase in bobbling up and down (where the bobbling gets worse over time).  When I returned the sim rate to normal, the autopilot also trimmed the plane so that the pitch pointed 70 degrees up into the sky again.

Does anybody else experience this with the G1000 autopilot when they pause the game, or change the sim rate?

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by abrams_tank

8 minutes ago, flyinpilot212121 said:

im not overly concerned as I’m more than certain a 3PD will come around and provide better units at some point..RXP or flight 1

I don't think Flight1 or RXP provide autopilots, but rather their GPS units make use of the sim's existing AP (please correct me if I'm off base here).

And speaking of RXP and Flight1, my understanding is they are facing some challenges since apparently the past way of implementing their GPS units into the sim will not work with MSFS2020. Hopefully they will find a way -- I certainly want to be able to use a GTN 750 in MSFS.

Al

2 minutes ago, ark said:

I don't think Flight1 or RXP provide autopilots, but rather their GPS units make use of the sim's existing AP (please correct me if I'm off base here).

And speaking of RXP and Flight1, my understanding is they are facing some challenges since apparently the past way of implementing their GPS units into the sim will not work with MSFS2020. Hopefully they will find a way -- I certainly want to be able to use a GTN 750 in MSFS.

Al

Your absolutely correct..They don’t produce autopilots, but rather GPS units...My mind seems to be all over the place today..My mistake.

41 minutes ago, Cmcollazo71 said:

The autopilot seems to work well for me. To implement FLC you just have to select a speed lower than the present, there being no auto throttle the speed is controlled by pitch and for the pitch to be increased speed needs to be traded off.

I think on the whole the autopilots work pretty well.   As you describe, FLC is a speed-on-elevator mode.  Just to clarify, in this mode the throttle determines the rate of climb or descent not the speed.  If the throttle is set high, the aircraft will climb; if it is set low the aircraft will descend.  If an autothrottle is present and active, the thrust will be set to CLIMB if the preset altitude is higher than the present altitude, or idle if lower, resulting in a maximum rate climb or descent respectively.

However, I can understand that people used to flying the FSX default aircraft find it strange.    The FSX autopilot, and its SDK interface, is based on the simple Bendix unit found on small GA aircraft - and not very well at that.  It doesn't have an FLC mode, as these simple units didn't either.  Needless to say it's pretty unrealistic when implemented in an airliner or even light jet, but that's what was done in the FSX default aircraft as well as in many freeware and lower-quality payware planes.  Top-level planes - and in recent years also others such as Carenado - have implemented this mode using their own code outside the default autopilot scheme.    

 

20 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

When I increase the sim rate, the autopilot also does weird things, including an increase in bobbling up and down (where the bobbling gets worse over time).  When I returned the sim rate to normal, the autopilot also trimmed the plane so that the pitch pointed 70 degrees up into the sky again.

This bug is easy to understand (and hopefully will eventually get fixed).  The autopilot calculates its control deflections based not only on the current error but also on how much the error is has changed since the last timestep (derivative control).  If the timestep changes but the autopilot doesn't take this fully into account, it will produce an incorrect value.  

32 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

The G1000 autopilot for me on the Cessna 172 acts really weird if I pause the sim, or increase the sim rate. 

One time when I paused the game (with the "Pause" key), when I unpaused it, the plane's pitch tilted way up into the sky (like a 70 degree upward pitch).  Also, the trim also seemed to be set to point 70 degrees into the sky.  I assume this is some bug with the autopilot and pause feature?

When I increase the sim rate, the autopilot also does weird things, including an increase in bobbling up and down (where the bobbling gets worse over time).  When I returned the sim rate to normal, the autopilot also trimmed the plane so that the pitch pointed 70 degrees up into the sky again.

Does anybody else experience this with the G1000 autopilot when they pause the game, or change the sim rate?

Stay away from "active pause" and map a key to just "pause".  With active pause, your airspeed can still change, so you can end up at zero airspeed while paused.  Say if you throttle back a tiny bit and hit active pause, your airspeed will drop to zero.  It isn't the autopilot's fault, as your plane will simply fall from the sky.  

Also, anything above a sim rate of 4x is usually too much for the autopilot.  You might be able to get a short burst higher, but it will quickly overwhelm the AP.  Also if you get into choppy air, slow down to normal speed for a bit and let it re-aquire.  

2 minutes ago, lzamm said:

This bug is easy to understand (and hopefully will eventually get fixed).  The autopilot calculates its control deflections based not only on the current error but also on how much the error is has changed since the last timestep (derivative control).  If the timestep changes but the autopilot doesn't take this fully into account, it will produce an incorrect value.  

Ahhh, so this is what the autopilot is doing when you pause the game or change the sim rate!  Hope they fix this because I would like to keep the autopilot on when I pause the game or change the sim rate.

What threw me off guard is that the autopilot also seems to have an inbuilt yawdamper. Isn't that usually an extra button one needs to activate?

I suspect that some base code is not behaving but the larger issue is AutoPilots display quirky behavior depending on how they are used.  Meaning some functionality may not have been tested enough.  Oh well what else is new.

I'm on hold for the XBOX Series X which adds another wrinkle to the codebase.

Regards

bs

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by bean_sprout

3 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

Stay away from "active pause" and map a key to just "pause". 

Oh, you mean the "Esc" key which is just "pause" (when I search for "pause" in the controls for keyboard, I only see "Toggle Pause" which is the "Esc" key and "Toggle Active Pause" which is the "Pause" key). Yeah, I use the "Esc" key sometimes to pause the game.  The drawback of the "Esc" key is that it brings up the menu so you cannot pan around in the external view.  

It would be nice if Asobo changed the "active pause" to pause the game like the "Esc" key, but also allowed us to pan around the external view.

6 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Oh, you mean the "Esc" key which is just "pause" (when I search for "pause" in the controls for keyboard, I only see "Toggle Pause" which is the "Esc" key and "Toggle Active Pause" which is the "Pause" key)

You're probably only seeing those because you have the Filter set to ASSIGNED. Change the Filter to ALL and you'll see two inputs that aren't assigned as default -- SET PAUSE ON and SET PAUSE OFF. Assign those to an unused key. I use "p" for set pause on and "shift p" to set pause off. 

This will pause the sim in a way that doesn't freak out the autopilot. You won't be able to change things in the cockpit as with Active Pause, but the external camera and drone are still available.

 

47 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

You're probably only seeing those because you have the Filter set to ASSIGNED. Change the Filter to ALL and you'll see two inputs that aren't assigned as default -- SET PAUSE ON and SET PAUSE OFF. Assign those to an unused key. I use "p" for set pause on and "shift p" to set pause off. 

This will pause the sim in a way that doesn't freak out the autopilot. You won't be able to change things in the cockpit as with Active Pause, but the external camera and drone are still available.

 

Thanks!  It was the filter that wasn't showing it!  That pause is much better!

I wonder why Asobo used the Active Pause as the default pause and not this other pause that you have to map to.  I would think most people don't want the autopilot and the plane to freak out after a pause.

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by abrams_tank