Auto trim - remove tediousness while making the process more realistic

Trim is for releasing the pressure on the yoke/stick so that the aircraft is more comfortable and easier to fly. You move the trim until you no longer required constant pressure to fly at your desired attitude.

Queue flight simulators. Very few of us use a force feedback stick so there is no pressure to release. It is simply an annoying chore. It is annoying because many of us don’t have an analog axis to bind and even when we do, the feeling is still completely different to real life requiring constant jiggling that we just don’t need to do. That’s if we can get a curve that works well at all and a single curve doesn’t necessarily feel right in all aircraft. It is horrible in every sim ever.

Solution. Seeing the current mechanism isn’t realistic in operation then we can add an “auto-trim” button. What this does is sets the trim automatically instead of making it a slider/button press mini-game. Now we can make this more realistic by doing the following.

  1. The pilot sets the aircraft attitude as desired.
  2. The pilot pushes a momentary “auto-trim” button.
  3. The auto-trim feature moves the trim in “real time” (over a couple of seconds maybe, I never timed it as I don’t really have to think about it in a real aircraft) to the correct trim position where the pilot can relax the stick pressure. We could tell when this is done because we would need to slowly move the stick to the resting position as auto-trim is working. Just like in real life.

That’s it. While pressing the button is not realistic, the actual process is fairly realistic and it isn’t tedious and difficult. Just like trimming isn’t tedious and difficult in in a real aircraft.

Of course, if people didn’t want to use it (they may have good FFB or think the manual method is more realistic) then they just don’t bind the key.

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I only have a couple of hours in the sim so far. I am very happy with it. But, as a newbie it would be nice if there was an on/off auto trim option for all of the aircraft. I would definitely turn it on until my flying skills/knowledge improves. Or… maybe there is and just can’t find it?

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That’s called an autopilot. You only trim if you fly manually, and therefore you also have to trim manually.
And… practice makes perfect…

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With auto pilot the pilot is the passenger in the very first row. Do you want this?
If you fly manually, there are at least three trim settings: climbing, level-flight, descending. An “auto trim” makes not a lot of sense, yes? Maybe my post “Cessna 152 most easy landing” here in the forum can help you a little.

I don’t think you understand what trim really is and what is meant by “relieving pressure“. You don’t need a force feedback stick to feel pressure. What it’s means by releasing the pressure is the forward or back pressure that you are having to apply to your yoke or stick in order to fly level, climb, or descend. Once a plane is properly trimmed, I can climb, fly level, or descend without having to put any back pressure or forward pressure on yoke or stick. The plane will climb or descend by itself with yoke or stick centered and the pilot not having to push forward or backward. The pilot only had to apply the Forward or back pressure to the stick initially to begin the climb or descent. Once a steady climb or descent rate is achieved. You then trim the plane until you no longer have to apply any forward or back pressure to the stick.

Even for level flight, depending on how much throttle you have set, sometimes you have to apply forward or back pressure on the stick just to maintain level flight and to keep the plane from climbing or descending. For example, let’s say I have my throttle set fairly high around 100%, but I don’t want the plane to climb. I just want to go really fast. In real life and in the sim, if i don’t set my trim properly, I will need to constantly push my yoke or stick forward to keep my plane from climbing. But instead I can use my elevator trim to trim down until I no longer have to push my yoke/stick forward to maintain level flight.

That’s what the pressure is. The yoke/stick is not pushing against your hands. You are having to apply pressure to your yoke/stick to keep your plane from climbing at your current throttle setting. In the scenario I described with 100% power, if you want to fly level and not climb, you have 3 choices. Give the plane less throttle or constantly push your stock forward or trim down until you no longer have to push your stick forward.

Same thing applies when climbing or descending. If during takeoff at max throttle, let’s say that I want to climb out at 75 mph and a 15 degrees angle. If during my 75 mph 15 degree climb, I am having to pull back on my yoke i.e. apply back pressure, instead I will trim up until I no longer have to apply any back stick pressure and the plane climbs out at 75 mph and 15 degrees all on its own with my stick/yoke centered and with no back-pressure.

Same thing when descending. Let’s say I want to descend. Normally I would throttle back to about 50%, until I achieved a 500 foot/minute descent rate. But throttling back would also slow down my forward speed. So let’s say I’m running late and I want to keep cruising fast and descending. So instead of throttling back as much, I stay at 75% throttle. At 75% throttle the plane will not descend on its own. It will want to keep flying level. So in order to begin my descent at 75% throttle, I have to push forward fairly hard on the yoke (forward pressure) until I am in a nice slow 500 foot per minute descent. But let’s say that I’m descending from 30K feet down to 2K and I really don’t want to have to hold forward pressure on my stick for all that time. So I trim down until I no longer have to press forward on my stick/yoke any more. I’m still at 75% throttle, and I’m still descending at 500 feet per minute, but my yoke is centered with no forward pressure required because I’ve trimmed perfectly for my 500 ft/min descent.

Now let’s say that I see that I’m running a little low on fuel, so I throttle back to 50%. If I don’t change my trim, I will start descending much faster. I see that I’m now descending at 1,000 feet/min now and my wife is getting uncomfortable. So I have to apply back pressure on my yoke to slow my descent rate. But again I don’t want to have to apply back pressure the whole way down, so I trim up until I no longer need to apply any back pressure to my yoke.

It’s very important when using trim, that you never want to control the plan with your trim tabs. For example, if I wanted to, I could let go of the stick and just use my trim tabs to steer my plane up and down or left and right if I have rudder and/or aileron trim tabs. But let’s stick to elevators trim tabs. In the scenarios I described, I always first used my yoke/stick to achieve the flight condition that I want: Level, up, or down, once I am flying level or descending or climbing at the rate that I want, by applying forward or back pressure to my stick/yoke. Then I use my trim to relieve that forward or back pressure that I was having to apply to my yoke, not the other way around.

Using trim is a very important aspect of a flying. MSFS is intended to be a flight simulator not a flying video game. Some planes do have Auto-trim, but it’s very uncommon. I recommend that you just learn how to use trim properly. When you get it right, it will make flying a lot easier, less work, and more enjoyable, not the other way around.

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I feel like the spirit of how Yuudai5178 was describing trim and pressure is essentially the same as how you are describing it. I don’t think he misunderstands at all.

I also agree that it is dramatically easier to trim in real life than it is in a sim. I think the suggestion of an auto-trim is a reasonable compromise in that it allows you to accomplish the task in a similar timeframe and with a similar amount of effort as you would expect to spend in a real plane.

I think this would make for a great add-on.

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I dont think its that hard to trim in any Sims, or FS2020 to be honest. You just need to allow the airspeed to settle, and re adjust the RPM (if in a prop) as necessary. Get a stable RPM, and a stable airspeed, and then trim. Just like the real world. I find it easier to trim in this Sim because theres no obvious or regular windchanges, no small gust, no thermals, no downdrafts etc currently simulated. I think some people are lacking a bit of patience. You will always baloon up and down if you arent using the correct method and not allowing the airspeed to settle, nor using small adjustments.

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Haha, jeeze all those hours flying real aircraft and I didn’t know what trim was for how how to do it!? I’ll get my check pilot to teach me during my next BFR.

You wrote a very nice post but it does seem as though you have completely missed the point I was making.

@BeakstarRocks got it.

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How do you enter the trim on the 787?

Beg to differ with you all, even though I have JS buttons set to control trim, it takes an arm and a leg to get it correct. I fight trim all the time. Not sure I even have it set correctly, but seems to work in all the planes flown except the C152/172. It’s getting better, but not like FSX for sure. I like the idea of “auto trim”, or making the buttons work properly, as I should not be fighting the trim setting in this SIM.

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This feature is actually pretty common to helicopters. The force on the stick comes from centering springs like on your joystick, rather than actual forces on the blades, so all the trim button does is reset the centering springs to current stick position.

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I agree that I tend to fight trim all the time which results in my engaging AP more and flying the plane that way alone. Honestly it’s not unlike throttle where you’re trying to set something using buttons instead of actual mechanical mechanisms.

For me, I’d like to be able to use my mouse wheel for trim, knob turning, etc. Right now I can hit Control-Shift-Z to select the Altitude Bug and then, while still holding Control, hit the +/- on the keypad to adjust it. I’d love to be able to continue holding control and spin my mouse wheel for that. Then, provide me the ability to select ANY adjustable setting (radios, trim, etc) to manipulate this way. You could even let me double-click or control-click on something in the plane to engage the mouse-wheel as well. (Mouse over and mouse wheel is great, except that planes bounce and it’ll adjust a little and then I’m either zooming deep in or far out…)

Additionally, if I’m flying a real plane, then I have context of where the setting is easily – but constantly looking up/down in the sim can be difficult – trim on the Cessna for example is way down – so I’m typically adjusting the trim out-of-sight – a momentary hud for settings like that would be nice – so that I have knowledge of exactly how far the trim has changed – because 5-clicks will move it different amounts depending on how quickly you click those 5 clicks…

These are all just ideas that I think would give more options in managing the flight instruments for the players of the sim. I don’t think any of them violate “realism” because, in a plane, these things all have their context and feedback immediately provided to you.

Other things like being able to see the current settings of trims and the like would be nice, because I’m still trying to debug why my plane pulled strongly to the right during a bush flight last night… Even if it’s just a “debug” view so that I can see “oh, my rudder trim is slammed to the right – even though I can’t find any physical mechanism in this plane that represents rudder trim”.

Just trying to make it better so that we can remove some of the more-difficult-than-life items and remove frustration from the experience.

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It should be a lot easier. Utilizing the mouse wheel, and having it behave like an aircraft trim wheel, would be the easiest solution for aircraft with a trim wheel system.

As an ex-military pilot, I’m used to using the trim button on the stick. But it isn’t implemented very well in MSFS, and varies aircraft to aircraft.

To me, it would be a much better idea to make the trim more realistic rather than auto-triim, especially for training. I’m for maximum realism, but I realize there are gamers that aren’t. So perhaps give us the choice.

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Are you sure? I think MS intend it to be a bit of both, tbh. I vote for ‘Auto Trim’. Those who prefer to do things the hard way can just opt not to enable it. Let the rest of us at least have that option.

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I like the idea of using the mouse wheel, it’s the closest approximation of a trim wheel on any common setup. But you couldn’t use a keystroke to enable it, especially if you had to hold it down. Then I’d have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard - leaving none for the yoke.

How about this: an option is provided for a single button toggle to enable “Trim Mode.” This could be mapped to a button on the yoke/joystick or the mouse itself (Button 3 - pressing down on the wheel - makes the most sense to me). While in Trim Mode, the mouse wheel controls trim instead of zoom. Press again to exit Trim Mode.

Additionally - and this strikes me as very important - while in Trim Mode a visual representation of the trim setting is overlaid onscreen, like the virtual instruments in the external cockpit view. While this isn’t strictly realistic visually, it IS realistic to be able to see what you’re doing with the trim wheel, where it’s set and how far you’re moving it, which is feedback you almost never get in a sim (at least not without zooming and panning away from the windshield). Just as importantly, the overlay serves as an obvious reminder that you are in Trim Mode, so you don’t forget and mess up your flight controls next time you try to zoom the camera.

I also like the idea of an auto-trim button, and see no reason both options couldn’t be provided.

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This looks like a great option, too. I don’t know if it is supported, although it states that it is: https://flightvelocity.com/collections/flight-simulator-flight-controls/products/flight-velocity-trim-wheel

Is auto trim called something else in the sim. Can’t find it. Just something that says set trim. Like to try it as I’m constantly fighting sautés trim wheel and curious to try it out. Thanks.

There is no auto trim in the sim. Yuudai5178 is suggesting there should be :slight_smile:

🤦‍♂️            Doh   Thanks

What you describe is similar to how the RealTrim add-on for FSX works, almost:

I’ll describe how this works:
You hold your yoke/stick off-centre to keep the aircraft in the desired attitude. With RealTrim installed, you map a button that temporarily ‘freezes’ your control inputs for as long as you hold it. While holding the button, you centre your controller. As you relieve the pressure on your controller, the movement of your controller is actually moving the trim position. Once your controller is back to centre, you let go of the button and that is your new trim position - the aircraft continues flying as desired. It feels very natural and is quite precise.

It was a great little add-on, though I discovered that it did not play nicely with A2A Simulations’ aircraft where the trim was implemented differently (less coarse than default FSX).

With MSFS, I find that my biggest frustration is the old ‘delay + key repeat’ syndrome of FSX:

  • One press of the trim key will apply one ‘notch’ of trim - applying many single notches of trim with separate presses takes forever to make significant changes of trim
  • Pressing and holding the trim key will give one ‘notch’ of trim, then a half-second pause, then it goes into continuous (key repeat) mode and the trim moves too fast. Anyone familiar with FSX will remember the key-repeat speed settings in the mapping screens. They had their uses but it was a pet hate of mine with regard to trim behaviour.

I would rather the trimming speed would be more ‘constant’ (not start/stop/go-fast), possibly ramping up to be slightly faster the longer you hold the key.

As a FFB stick owner, I would also LOVE to see an off-centre trimming option like DCS includes (that sim has multiple trim options on some aircraft, depending on your controller). Doesn’t always play nicely with curves when you trim off-centre, however, but works brilliantly with helicopters in general! :slight_smile:

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