Autosave needs to work on two levels:
Flight Autosave: This saves the location of the aircraft in the world and the altitude.
Panel Autosave: This saves the autopilot and cockpit configuration.
In P3D, I used to use FSUIPC to do a Flight Autosave every 5 minutes, and the aircraft that I was flying (PMDG or QualityWings) had a Panel Autosave feature built in.
So in the event of a CTD, I would reload the Flight Autosave first, and as soon as the flight loads, I would load the last Panel Autosave from the FMC or EFB, and resume my flight like nothing happened.
What I hope to see is for Asobo to standardize both Autosave features, combining them together natively as part of the SDK. So that this whole process becomes much simpler. Without needing any third-party tools.
In the event of a CTD, the user just has to reload the last autosave, and both the flight and the panel will load as they were before the CTD.
This feature is extremely important especially with the long-range airliners coming to the sim soon. No one wants to be on approach after an 8 hour flight and have a CTD that cannot be recovered from.