We’ve had MS2020 for over a year, and the Autopilot lacks basic functionality and user options that reduce the options for long haul flying.
Major issues with autopilot:
→ Very limited pre-defined options for routes and ABNORMALLY LONG ascending and descending periods for long haul flights when a departure and/or destination airport is far from an IFR point, and NO ABILITY to adjust lengths of ascent/descent for direct GPS option.
→ No ability to set speed (and the SIM often has a mind of it’s own when throttling and doesn’t even maintain the speed it’s supposed to - this has gotten worse than before - so long haul flights take much longer than pre SU5)
I really would just love the old autopilot option such as in MSFS2000 through FSX when it would hold the altitude and follow a route, but I could still control the throttle to whatever I wanted and manually take over at anytime.
In other words, I’d be happy with the current version of autopilot if it just allowed me the option to control the throttle manually while it held altitude and course.
The current limitations of MSFS autopilot really put a monkey wrench for long haul flights.
Cessna Longitude. Trying to fly to ENSB, which doesn’t have a long enough runway for a Dreamliner to land. Is there any other autopilot option in the game vs. “Flight Assistant - AI Piloting”? If there is, I cannot seem to find it or it is not clear. It’s either all control or lack of control. I just want the sim to hold course and altitude per the plan. Heck, when setting the flight plan, it did include a cruise speed, but the Flight Assistant is consistently flying 50 knots below. Is that a bug? It’s only flying 61% throttle and overspeed nowhere in site. For a long haul flight, that adds 2 hours. What gives.
It used to fly full on throttle before SU5 and always hit overspeed. While a bit faster than actual, I didn’t mind as much since since it got me to destinations faster. Normally like to cruise as fast as I can before hitting the annoying overspeed. It seems like I don’t have any options now.
Get the FBW A320. The autopilot works perfectly fine for most trips. I fly all over the road with it, 5-6 hours fights or more, and don’t have many issues. There are some minor things since it’s not full fidelity yet, but certainly no issues holding speed, LNAV, ILS approaches etc
I haven’t flown the sim nearly as much as others on this forum. When I do, I’m mostly showing family members short term tours of places they want to see. I rarely used autopilot and haven’t attempted a long haul in many months. Back in the FSX and earlier days, I’d fly long haul quite a bit in the background while doing other tasks. The built in GPS/autopilot was extremely user friendly in the 2000-2006 generation of sims. Very user friendly for long haul flights directly built into the base sim.
I’m not familiar with the suggestions. Are they payware addons? So they’re aren’t any settings or options in the actual sim I’m not aware of?
Long haul? Really the only one right now is the 777 by Captain Sim but I wouldn’t recommended it. PMDG is going to pump out their 777 and 747 at some point after their 737. There are a handful of long haul currently being developed. Once I land I will name them off. In the mean time…
FBW A320 and the Working Title CJ 4 are both completely free.
Also, have you tried using the autopilot in the base sim - not the one you turn on via the menus (that’s AI Pilot/ Assistance) but the actual autopilot that you turn on in the plane by pressing the appropriate button?
Most default planes have autopilot and it works fine. Just watch a couple videos on how to use it. Try the Cessna 172 and the default A320, both are reasonably easy.
They can’t fix little things, like the pushback tug line up on small planes instead of disappearing under the fuselage first and then popping back out; they can’t fix the Longitude fuel flow to read “PPH” instead of “PPM” and you want them to take on a task as complex as this!?!
But as to the speed thing, you have to use a plane with autothrottle or else, like in real life, you are constantly adjusting the throttle to maintain a constant speed.
Well, believe it. Some of us still feel that MS should have everything in the cockpit that they INTENDED to function , actually do so correctly without forcing us to resort to 3rd party addons and modds.
