I assume the add-on doesn’t work with MSFS (or 64 bit apps in general)?
I haven’t tried but I would guess not due to 32/64-bit differences as you said, since it’s a DLL. It only came to mind today while reading this thread - a similar tool or an upgrade of this one would be most welcome for MSFS!
I agree 100%!
I think for me the biggest problem when holding down a trim button is that the trim wheel moves slightly, pauses and then starts moving again… I think if it just started moving at a consistent rate right from the start it would much nicer to use. Maybe also give us the ability to change the speed at which the trim wheel moves when holding a button for it.
MSFS is clearly designed to be configurable to cater to simmers and gamers, so I think the addition of a ‘Trim here’ bind would be good too. I had a play with the various Elevator Trim binds the other day and I noticed there is a bind option for ‘Set Elevator Trim’, and I just could not figure out what it did, if anyone knows?
Setting the trim when you don’t use the AP can be tedious, much more than IRL where you can feel the force you have to apply on the stick/wheel. I’d like a button to make this easier.
- hold the stick in the right position
- press and hold the “magic trim” button/key.
- slowly release your stick to center position
- release the “magic trim” button.
Voilà ! Your trim is set.
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I would dearly like a neat way to quickly trim which is easier for all of the folks here using various controllers, which have no force feedback and a variety of different analog ranges.
That doesn’t mean we don’t know what trim is, it just means that the current method is not easy because there is very little ‘feedback’ during adjustment, so it’s hard for us to tell how near/close from a correct trim we are. So it requires a ‘su ck it and see’ method which is a bit like mimicking a kangaroo.
For many controllers, a sensible takeoff trim results in the plane trying to launch itself into space once a reasonable climb speed is reached, which can be a bit of a struggle, if an analogue stick’s range of movement is very short/narrow… so it seems to have no tolerance for simple folk like me who have modest controllers such as Xbox controllers.
So this gets my vote 
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It sounds like you could benefit from investing in a Track IR.
Some planes, like the TBM, have the trim positions shown in the MFD. I find i get quite good trim results by mapping the trim control to a spare throttle axis.
Also, if anyone is having trouble trimming and you have the honeycomb alpha yoke, check your magneto bindings as there is a bug that accelerates trim(and other controls like the heading bug) by a factor of 10. You can search this in the forums for more info.
I tried to do the same in the C172, but it resulted in crazy pitch behavior when I switched off the AP. Presumably, because the trim surface snapped back to whatever the control axis was set to. Trim is better handled by discrete +/- inputs, I think.
Yes, seen that. I tend to avoid it by adjusting the trim level slighlty before turning off the AP rather than after. That seems to fix that for me
You don’t, it’s fly by wire. Meaning the flight control computers assume your intent based on your yoke inputs and calculates additional variables (wind, pitch etc.) And moves the control surfaces accordingly.
Yes that would help a lot of people. I am lucky enough to have a thumb wheel on the throttle of my TM setup and, with a setup of the response curve to give less near the centre it is fairly easy to establish trim in steady-state flight.
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A wheel… Yeah, I wonder if it could map to a mouse wheel? That might be a neat way of trimming for me and my little Xbox controller… Would need to remap the zoom but perhaps it could be mapped to clicked mouse wheel or something. I might experiment.
[edit] Using mouse wheel for trim didn’t work well at all… I used [centre-click+wheel] and it had little effect. Worth a try though.
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That’s a nice idea. It’ll take some work to get right, but I like it. The Cherokee I used to own a share in had an electric trim button on the yoke, that was super nice to have. It wasn’t auto, but, I picture even a button like that that you held till it was trimmed would be nice. I think I like your “autotrim” idea better though, more suited to flight sim since you can’t really feel the airplane trimming out.
I’ve found setting the trim up and trim down buttons just don’t work at all, you can’t tell when it’s working, and it’s not granular enough, so you can never find that sweet spot like you said.
I did just discover I could use the unused throttle axis on my Logitech Extreme3D Pro as a trim axis, and that has been a god send, trimming is so easy and flying much more realistic to me now. True, it’s only a 45 degree pot, but, it wasn’t too hard to get used to setting it properly to trim the plane right out.
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Absolutly right. Spec. the A-320. is jumping up and down when adjusted even slightly. That cant be right. SIM means like for real
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I suggested exactly this back in the beta phase of the product, had no idea it had been previously implemented in FSX, but add another vote. I find it near impossible to trim the planes, so adding the auto trim (i.e. hold the current attitude when the yoke/stick re-centers) or at very lease a display we can turn on always that shows trim position would make it so much easier. Right now I find I’m hovering a mouse over the trim control to watch the value it’s set to.
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You’re not supposed to trim the A320, it’s Fly By Wire and trims itself.
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I think they just need to change the repeat rate of the trim command to make it more comfortable to use, same with a lot of the FMS and Autopilot dials, 3rd party devs have accomplished this in previous sims and I think Asobo would do well to go back and fly PMDG and Aerosoft planes from previous sims and try to replicate their ease of use.
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Hi all,
I too was frustrated by the time spent trimming especially during approaches where you have so much to do. I remember when flying gliders it was so simple and quick… So I tried to improve things a bit by developing a kind of “smart trim” on the mouse.
It is not perfect but you may want to try it and find for yourselves:
The idea is:
- use mouse moves while pressing backward/forward buttons (which are not used by default) to move elevator/aileron trims faster than with a button
- at the same time, move the trim to compensate centering move of the stick/yoke
Both actions take into account your current indicated airspeed as MSFS seems to only model aerodynamic trims which efficacy depends on velocity.
The default sensitivity is not working for all planes but with most GA planes I have tried, you can center back your stick/yoke with few changes on your attitude and much faster than by using a button with hard-coded repeat rate…
Do not hesitate to give me some feedback!
Cheers,
Arnaud
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I generally hate the idea of auto-anything. I want to use this as a sim, not a game.
However, trimming does suck. I have a rotary encoder with 20 detents per revolution and it takes several full spins of my trim wheel to get more than a millimeter of movement from the in-game trim wheel. The whole process of trimming the aircraft will often take 1-2 minutes of…
- slightly release pressure on yoke…
- nose starts to rise, goto next step. If doesn’t, relax, you’re trimmed
- put pressure back on yoke
- rotate my trim wheel by one big “throw” - around half a rotation
- Go to step 1
So as you can’t actually feel the pressure being removed, you have to just see what the nose does. The process is not realistic anyway, so why not some kind of assistance. I’m a convert to the idea.
p.s. related to the other trim wheel bug, where you grab it by hand (mouse) and move it a few millimeters, and the plane attempt to go into orbit (or dive bomb)
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