I haven’t picked up the sim for a while but I seem to remember there being a certain acceleration when you would turn a knob in the cockpit. I just use my mouse for this interaction so I would mouse over, say, the altitude knob and spin my scroll wheel. After a while the knob would spin faster and it made it easier to get to higher values quicker. Is this still an option or was this removed in an update recently? It feels different when I’m turning these knobs now.
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Go to your General Options → Accessibility → Cockpit Interaction. Change from LOCK to LEGACY.
@Skytbest
Looks like it has been unfortunately removed. (legacy mode)
E.g. altitude and heading scrolling takes much longer now, at least on my PC.
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Agree with this and I must say it is yet another small backwards step since SU5. Glad somebody felt the need to raise this issue. There are so many small issues going on right now, ones like this often just slip under the radar.
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It’s not removed for everything though, and I find it annoying where it still is TBH.
For example, pressing nose up/nose down to adjust FLC speed. Start at 120, click down 4 times and you’re at 116, but click 10 times and you might be at 60 or something. Hard to aim it right, as it doesn’t feel natural.
For buttons, I think it would be better to have gradual acceleration while holding it down, at least for buttons where holding doesn’t have any special purpose IRL.
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I don’t understand. How do you change the FLC target speed by pressing nose up/down?
On which aircraft are you pushing a button multiple times?
All G1000 (NXi) aircraft work that way. Actually not all, all that don’t have a V/S “scroll wheel”. So e.g. the Cessna 172.
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Ok, I understand, but why would you make large changes in FLC mode?
This results in pretty large pitch oscillations.
If you want to e.g. increase the speed during descent you are normally doing this in very small steps.
An even more comfortable way is to start the descent in V/S and let the aircraft accelerate.
Once the target speed has been reached, switch to FLC.
You are right of course but I was guilty of the same approach to using FLC. It was the first way I learned to descend or climb using the autopilot and it just kinda sticks as a routine even though I knew VS mode was a better way and also it reduced the number of steps required to getting to the correct altitude.
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Second method is probably good, indeed.
I don’t make large changes while in descent/climb, but rather things like enable FLC while level at 120 knots, then set it to 85 and climb at Vy. Haven’t really considered comfort as I’m a sim-only pilot and I don’t expect that to change – though I do care about realism anyway.
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This is exactly what I do as well, and I see the same problems with the awful “acceleration”. Same problems when dialing in target altitudes; acceleration kicks in (“surprise!”) and I overshoot by thousands of feet, then dial it back down, accelerate, overshoot, back and forth a few times.
I hate it. I would like to disable “acceleration” permanently.
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If you need t make large changes with a knob you can hold down the SHIFT key while scrolling with the mouse wheel and it will speed things up. I use LEFT SHIFT. I don’t know if it works with right shift.
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This is a so called zoom climb which you usually don’t want.
Initially set a V/S which results in a constant slow deceleration and when reaching 85kts switch to FLC or reduce the V/S which is my preferred way, IRL as well.
Or you perform a cruise climb. If you are using less than climb power for cruise, select FLC, increase power to climb power and climb at the current speed.
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That’s a good and definitely smooth transition however it also has a risk: If you do that and suddenly get distracted (ATC, traffic etc) you can easily end up underspeed. My instructor always warned me to do that in case I ever flew with an autopilot. ^^
This must be either a very long distraction and/or a very fast decreasing airspeed. 
And it contradicts the most important rule:
At first, fly the aircraft.
It does… but nobody’s perfect but the AP is a stubborn bas****. And weekend sunshine pilots are not as routined as commercials ^^ No, you’re right with that of course. But accidents don’t happen without a reason and this reason is mostly pilot error. All above when you’re alone automation, if used, should always be used completely.
As a sidenote: the only AP I ever flew with myself was a simple S-tec that could hold the set attitude. No idea of its name anymore. I used it when I had to check and fold the ICAO chart but I never trusted it although it was a good help.
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Automation was always ‘problematic’.
The more capable the autopilot system became, the greater the complacency and the lack of alertness.
I tend to believe that a low time GA pilot is more alert when flying on AP than a longrange crew after 9hrs.
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I think it’s just a “shift” in the alertness, from being alert from your visual surroundings, and how the aircraft is flying. Into being more alert for any signs of flight computers and instruments malfunctions.
Kinda like how robotics replaces manual labour jobs in the factories. That doesn’t mean they reduce the job availability for manual labours, but it actually increases the job availability for robot technicians and maintenance mechanics. So the job market doesn’t experience a loss, but instead a shift into something different.
Thanks for pointing that out. I was able to find the key bindings for this looking up the ‘shift’ button. I found out that this doubles the speed of the altitude knob turning speed, which does help, but it seems that there’s no way to make it turn any faster than that, or to set it 3 or 10 times faster than 100 feet per click of the mouse wheel. I tried all sorts of things like changing to legacy mode, using mouse default config, and nothing changes it. With the CJ4, there seems to be no buttons to change increment values from 100 to 1000 like the airbus neo. It still means sitting there pushing the knob for what seems like 10 or 20 seconds while now, also, pushing down the shift key. Still seems slow to me, especially if you want to go from ground level up to 40,000 feet. Usually when you turn the knob a certain direction for long enough it speeds up the rate of increase, but it’s not. They should have made an option to select your own increase number when you hold shift down, or make the knob turn faster the longer you press it, like MSFX did.
If I’m not mistaken, you have to turn the altitude knob up or down to your desired elevation before you turn on FLC. If you’re at 10,000 feet and you want to get up to 40,000, you still have to manually turn the altitude knob 30,000 feet higher setting, which brings us back to the original problem; the aircraft like the CJ4 will take you 10 to 20 secs of turning the knob to get there, which is annoying. I would use VS the whole way but doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having the convenience of the FLC button?