I don’t know what’s going on inside the development team but these issues with the autopilot erratic behavior are not new to this simulator, and still need to be fixed with high priority.
Took the Cessna 172 G1000 for a point to point flight, and the AP still suffers from few critical issues :
For some reason about 300-400 feet before the selected cruise altitude the Flight Director commands rapid pitch up then down before slowly start to level off towards the selected altitude. Very strange… why it can’t just do a non-linear command and nicely level off ?
Flying on a HDG mode to intercept my course between 2 points, I was on a smooth 20 degree 1 mile of the route to intercept, selected NAV mode than the AP rather then arm the GPS (white) mode and wait until the needle starts to move, then nicely intercept the course, decided to rapidly turn almost 45 degrees and overshoot the course with some oscillation few times until it captured it ?!
I pressed ESC to go to the menu an save the game… when I came back in the plane lost it’s pitch and dropped the nose then started chasing the Flight Director to recapture the altitude… something is going on when you exit and come back to the menu.
I just want to say that these issues have not been fixed yet since the game was release. It really bothers me because it’s the BASICS !.
I’ll open a zendesk request however if it wasn’t fixed by now… I don’t hope for it.
Many thought the AP issues were related to specific aircraft, but I am afraid there are endemic issues in the underlying sim that are broken. The dev team has been working this very serious issue, but may be working in the wrong place.
It is very sad when we fly a long route and then have the AP fail badly on the approach. With the A320neo the issues are so bad I have been unable to successfully complete a flight for the last 3 major updates.
I even saw an announcement that they were holding the last update to fix the AP. But here we are, another update and the AP still does not work.
What i can see from experience is their “Prediction / Lead” for some functions are not done right.
On many Planes I flew including jets (E190/A320) the autopilot algorithm is a function of how fast you climb / turn for the autopilot so start a proper capture of altitude heading or speed.
If you climb 3000FPM, the autopilot will initiate a NON-Linear level-off at earlier altitude, while if you climb only 500FPM the autopilot will do the same way later… say 100 feet from your altitude.
In one of the FAA books If I’m not wrong “Airplane Flying Handbook” there is actually a rule of thumb that teach you when to start a nice slow level-off to intercept altitudes and headings. If they only could apply these to the sim… It would fix most of the issues of incorrect oscillation of the automated flight systems on all the planes.
As I said before… this team need some real world pilots and flight instructors to work along the engineers / software developers to make a good successful product.
Their co-op with Garmin… Cessna… Diamond… and others… Yet I can’t believe they can’t fix these issues
I had the situation that happens all to often, after a 4 hour flight it decides to break autopilot and fly directly to the airport, other times it just circles. So much time has now passed and they don’t have a handle on how to fix it. The screenshot here shows what happens most of the time on a approach like this. Straight in approaches seem to work a bit better.
I’ve just updated to the next version 10. 8.0 and Autopilot is still erratic in C172 Steam. I engage it with wings level and then hang on as A/C goes berserk? What is with this bug. I’ve calibrated my home Sim ailerons etc but to still no result when AP is turned on.
I see this quite often in both the default A320 and the NX… Yes there’s work arounds (I switch to manual operation , as it usually occurs for me in the decent or approach mode) But it needs fixed… as do the AP issues with the other aircaft.
I find it strange how some of these community groups seem to be making better progress on their improvements working title, also rumours Flybywire were considering developing the AP on the A320nx.
I’m flying now routes in the flight planner (With No Star selected) and selecting a specific ILS runway. If I want I can add more waypoints in the plane if I don’t like the approach. I don’t have many flights logged right now, but so far it seems to work. I’m not flying any approaches like what I illustrated with that patterned curve because it screws up every time.
