I am a new to flight simulator and have been trying to get experience on the A320 with auto pilot. I’ve been doing my research and following tutorials and I have a good understanding on how to navigate setting up auto pilot, however no matter what I do I cannot get auto pilot to follow a heading or my flight plan. With auto pilot engaged, speed and altitude are managed perfectly but I always end up having to manually guide the plane through waypoints. Maybe I’m missing something but I’ve spent hours researching without any luck.
I am using an Xbox controller on PC and have set my deadzones to 10%.
The A320neo is a piece of junk. Go to Flybywire and get the A320nx, https://flybywiresim.com/. The installer will put the aircraft where it needs to be. If you’re new, get the stable version. It’s free, and as close to getting a really nice payware airplane for free. It’s in constant development, and gets better every update. The autopilot knobs can be pushed or pulled, which means you can put the autopilot in managed mode, which follows the MCDU flight plan, or manual mode which follows your input. As you mouse over the knob you will see arrows, and the tool tips should tell you which way to click to get the input you want.
This sounds consistent with what I have already been doing. I also watched that video and was hoping it would help but I’m following that pretty closely.
So I decided to film a video of my flight so that you guys can view and correct anything I may be doing wrong. I tried to get into the air quickly so that I could show auto pilot, I apologize for the warnings and improper flying techniques lol. As the video shows, I can adjust speed and altitude in AP but heading just does not do anything, I just end up drifting off to one side.
Except that there were some mistakes, that will get ironed out with experience, I would say you did pretty good . That unfortunately also means I was unable to directly spot what goes wrong with the heading. I noticed though, that the Aircraft seems to constantly try to bank right. Do you have any pedals connected? If you do another video in the future, it would be great to quickly see your sensitivity settings in neutral position, although I know that you said you have 10% deadone set. To make certain if the issue is with the default A320 or maybe something controller related, it would be great if you could give the free FlyByWire (FBW) A320 a try. You can find it in the in-game marketplace. If you fly smaller aircraft, like a Cessna, and all your controls are in neutral, do they also try to bank right?
Based on the excessive bank angles and the fact that you already have a decent deadzone set, is your flight model set to Modern? This is a common symptom when using the Legacy flight model for anything other than a ported FSX aircraft.
I do not have any pedals connected and I’ve kept my sensitivity settings at default with the exception of dead-zone at 10%. I’m not sure if the plane is being pushed to the right by AP or if it’s just naturally drifting that way cause I’m not holding the stick. Overall, this is frustrating and I will definitely give the FBW A320 a try tonight and let you know.
Otherwise, this is my first week in flight sim so I’m still learning and trying to get all the basics and standard procedures down
It is somewhere in the general settings. Then klick on flight model. The right settings page will either show Legacy at the top, or Modern. It has to be Modern!
Default 320neo’s following flight plan good enough for me, instead of AP of fbw, which has dependency of fps and/or UTF-8 issues (check at Reported Issues - FlyByWire Simulations Guides). And even when everything looks good sometimes you have to push DIRECT TO to kick fbw to desired point. Default NEO has mostly push and forrget AP.
To rule out deadzones being the issue, try putting the deadzones up a lot more, then check if it fixes it (disconnect/reconnect autopilot). If fixed, gradually reduce the deadzones until it still fixes the problem but you’re happy with how it feels.
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