In my case, with the first flight in the latest full build, the C172 appeared to be drunkenly glued to the runway, ailerons seemed to move through syrup, elevators wanted nothing to do with going “up”; it was absolutely uncontrollable in the air, and that damned autopilot was back to its kamikaze dive-n-die routine from the moment it was activated in a last ditch attempt to save the situation.
These are all gone now.
I suggest, as others have discovered and eluded to in earlier posts, that it’s reasonable now, and in fact totally appropriate, to set all values on the Sensitivity screen back to Zero. Don’t fly immediately after doing this but instead save the settings and restart the sim. Reasons for this will be explained below.*
Now fly something, see how it goes. If all’s well, adjust sensitivities to suit personal preferences.
However…if for some reason this didn’t work, then add this step: Close the sim. Remove all of your flight devices from the Windows Control Panel / Hardware view and reboot. (Don’t worry, this step is harmless. It merely forces Windows to reload the USB drivers for these devices as if it had never seen them before.) Now try the sim again. Hopefully, as in my case, you’re back to happy. If not, follow Jessica Chastain’s lead in “The Martian” and continue to “Work the problem, people.”.
- = To me, there appears to be a serious and too-often disruptive conflict between startup in the sim, its loading of default and saved configurations, and the suddenly-abrupt introduction of the first physical movement from our control devices. These inputs immediately override and potentially damage the seemingly stable tranquility that existed just a fraction of a second before. If the value difference is minor - the simplest case, very little happens. If substantial - the worst case, all hell breaks loose. We are left in the aftermath to determine WTF just happened!
The mixture control is a perfect example of what I’m suggesting. When you shut down your engine to complete your last flight you naturally pulled it all the way back to cut off the fuel and you would in real life. And there it stayed until your next flight.
Within the sim, the situation is different. When you press Fly Now, the engine is typically already running so life seems good. If it isn’t, you press Ctrl-e, the throttle and mixture knobs move around nicely and the engine comes to life. Yay! But hey, it never should’ve started. Why? Because your physical mixture knob is fully back – there’s no fuel. Until you move the mixture knob (or any control at all), the sim has no way of knowing where it is set. Once you move the mixture knob the slightest amount, the sim receives a value that says fuel is cut off so it kills the engine. “Dam it!”, you say: “It’s another !@# bug!”. Uh, no.
Consider applying this thought as you encounter issues with say, the actual DG bug’s location (and what the sim ‘thinks’ or infers that it is) when you start using it with the autopilot. Apply the same thought with what the simulator ‘believes’ about the trim wheel and how it appears to us. It controls and sets what we see, but cannot actually verify the result as we do - visually. We contrarily depend on what we see and feel, and have zero ability to know the internal values. The sim can also change an objects appearance in a fraction of a second – trim wheel full up or down - something we humans know is impossible and find totally confusing.
Hope this helps.
