I need help troubleshooting autopilot. I set up my autopilot settings and FMC at the gate, I manually take off, but when I get in the air and press auto pilot the plane flies straight and does not follow the flight plan. I have tried this on the Boeing 737 MAX 8, A320neo and Cessna citation cj4. I have watched countless youtube videos and taken pages of notes on the correct settings to use and this problem persists.
I am playing on my PC through the xbox app. msfs-2024
*side note I have been trying to updated my windows 11 but have been getting some Western Digital NVMe Disk error. I can’t imagine this is the cause of the autopilot not working, but I wanted to include that info.
Please share some screenshots of your cockpit, specifically the FCU (the autopilot panel beneath the windscreen), the ND (the display that shows the map of the flight route), and MCDU (on the F-PLN page). I suspect the beginning of your flight starts with a discontinuity - a common gap between the runway heading and your first waypoint where you would be vectored by ATC so they have more hands-on control of the busy airspace.
Here are the screenshots you asked for. I filed my flight plan in Simbrief and did all the steps. I cleared all discontinuity in the F-PLN page.
Your autopilot is still in “selected” mode for speed, heading, and altitude - you will want those all in “managed” mode which you can do so by pushing in the corresponding knob. “Push” to give control to the aircraft, “pull” to take control from the aircraft.
I did what you recommended but it still didn’t work. I tried to take this video showing the steps I took. IMG_4882
In that clip the AP is never engaged, only the autothrottle.
Edit: On repeat viewing it looks like you maybe did click it, but it definitely never engaged. Everything else that I can see there looks configured correct though I did notice your throttles are at TOGA instead of MCT. Try a takeoff at MCT instead and see if that allows you engage the AP.