Autopilot initiates a spiral dive

[kama2004 74]

Also here an hit and miss with autopilot.

At least it help practice getting out of the spiral of the death....  when AP is put back at off...

[fppilot 4,360]

9 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

I have been experiencing this for a while... happily flying on autopilot, GPS NAV mode and without warning, the autopilot puts me into a spiral dive.

I have not seen a lot of comments about this on the forum.. is it just me?

Only had it happen in my first or second flight when I used active pause and invited my wife to come take a look.  Took her several minutes to break away from what she was doing.  Unpaused and spiraled out of control to the ground, in the park across from my daughter's home in Indianapolis.

HI Sarah.  Just "dropped" in for an unannounced visit.....

Have not had it happen since as I have not again used active pause.  I would guess I have used AP in MFS perhaps during 30 to 40% of flights.  Configured keys for Pause On and Off based on your advice, so I highly assume your spirals are not related to Active Pause.

Edited October 2, 2020 by fppilot

[JRBarrett 3,070]

1 hour ago, fppilot said:

Only had it happen in my first or second flight when I used active pause and invited my wife to come take a look.  Took her several minutes to break away from what she was doing.  Unpaused and spiraled out of control to the ground, in the park across from my daughter's home in Indianapolis.

 Never ever ever use Active Pause for any reason. Asobo should remove that function from the game entirely. Using it is a guaranteed way to make the sim completely unstable.

[Donstim 109]

I use live and multiplayer traffic and have never had the issue. I have ai aircraft models set to "generic," which is supposed to help.

Many of the people I've corresponded with that have this issue are using Xbox controllers. Setting a deadzone of 5 to 10% has resolved the issue for them.

I did have the issue during the beta phase, but it resulted from having two controllers installed and active. The one I was not using was apparently sending some spurious signals or "fighting" with the one I was using. As soon as I disconnected one of the controllers, the issue resolved itself.

So, i think that at least for some of the people having this issue, it is a controller issue, and not just Xbox controllers.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

12 hours ago, fppilot said:

Configured keys for Pause On and Off based on your advice, so I highly assume your spirals are not related to Active Pause.

Indeed, I do not use Active Pause at all.

Right now, I cannot identify any particular cause.. it simply happens when I least expect it..

[Muklum 28]

I've never used Active Pause for short pauses, but on the few occasions when I've used it for long pauses I've found that the fuel tanks were empty on restarting, so the aircraft went into a dive, but could still be controlled on the glide. I don't know whether this simply means that fuel consumption continues at the pre-pause rate while the sim is paused.

[StoneDoor 86]

14 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

 Never ever ever use Active Pause for any reason. Asobo should remove that function from the game entirely. Using it is a guaranteed way to make the sim completely unstable.

Never seen that function make the sim unstable.

[StoneDoor 86]

19 minutes ago, Muklum said:

I've never used Active Pause for short pauses, but on the few occasions when I've used it for long pauses I've found that the fuel tanks were empty on restarting, so the aircraft went into a dive, but could still be controlled on the glide. I don't know whether this simply means that fuel consumption continues at the pre-pause rate while the sim is paused.

Active pause stops the plane but everything else goes on.

If your airspeed was decreasing, it will continue doing so, unless you throttle up.

If your speed is nearly zero when you get out of active pause, you'll go down.

[Gilles Boily 3]

I think the problem is related to the trim. I configured my trim on an wheel axis and I think the autopilot is fighting against the trim. If the later is not completely neutral or produce spike when you turn on the autopilot the plane get into a very high rate of climb and stall or it goes into an excessive dive. The only way to stop this is to turn off the AP if you react fast enough 

[Mike S KPDX 597]

2 hours ago, Muklum said:

I've never used Active Pause for short pauses, but on the few occasions when I've used it for long pauses I've found that the fuel tanks were empty on restarting, so the aircraft went into a dive, but could still be controlled on the glide. I don't know whether this simply means that fuel consumption continues at the pre-pause rate while the sim is paused.

During active pause, all aircraft functions continue except movement.  This includes flight velocity vectors the plane was experiencing just prior to the pause.  So, if the plane had any variation from exact level flight (not really doable in FS), then that continues.  So, for example if the nose was pitching down at a rate of 1 foot per minute, and you active pause for 15 minutes, your rate will be 15 feet per minute on the unpause.  So extrapolate that if you are climbing at 50 feet per minute, you are now at 750 FPM and possibly stalled.

On top of this, input device deflections follow the same rule, this is why is it advised to a full 'swipe' (deflection) of all control axis prior to the unpause.

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

Make sure that it's not a double keybind interfering. I haven't had this spiral death dive bug since launch week, but it seemed then to be related to multiple binds being bound to the same thing. 

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

If you have a Thrustmaster HOTAS; download the drivers and install them over your existing drivers.

Worked for me. 😉

No spiral dive anymore on putting AP in to flight as it is.

Remember; Don't THROW the aircraft at the AP, but rather INTRODUCE it to the AP - 

That means you're on the rough HDG and the right ALT and the aircraft doesn't have to do a limbo dance to get to your requested flight conditions.

This is how things work Real World. So they do in the Sim.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[RobJC 2,069]

I saw some weird behavior with AP. The plane literally went the wrong direction. Mooney. Loaded flight plan from Simbrief and did it manually. Turned AP on via white menu at top. 

[Kilo60 660]

1 hour ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

If you have a Thrustmaster HOTAS; download the drivers and install them over your existing drivers.

Worked for me. 😉

No spiral dive anymore on putting AP in to flight as it is.

Remember; Don't THROW the aircraft at the AP, but rather INTRODUCE it to the AP - 

That means you're on the rough HDG and the right ALT and the aircraft doesn't have to do a limbo dance to get to your requested flight conditions.

This is how things work Real World. So they do in the Sim.

If this is a fix why aren't my other flight sims with my TM HOTAS doing this with the AP or any other keybind mapped to the HOTAS?

 

I still believe this is solely a MSFS issue.

[andrecarli737 177]

Solution for me -> Setting a deadzone on the aileron axis so it wont activate while AP is on.