Trim Control input BUG

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Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

Trim Up/Down (through default keyboard controls or bound to hotas) button press produces miniscule trim input followed by a delay of about half a second followed by continual input. This is not how Trim works (on any aircraft, or for that matter in any flight simulator post 1997). Itā€™s like typing on a keyboard, if I hold down B (for Bug, or Bad Design) then I will see the letter B and after a short delay I will see BBBBBBBB until I stop pressing the B key. Trim input in MSFS is operating the same way - itā€™s wrong. It should be instantaneous and continuous trim up or down whilst button is held. On light aircraft fitted with an electric trim, that little button is the most frequently used button on the aircraftā€¦itā€™s a shame that such an important and frequently used control is wrong in MSFS. I see other control surface inputs working the same with this keyboard delayā€¦the difference with Trimis that youā€™re not modelling an analogue yoke or a stick - youā€™re modelling a button on the yoke or stick, and therefore should model it in the way it actually works in aircraft.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

N/A

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Jump in the DA40, look at the trim wheel, hold trim up key. should be instantaneous and continuous movement of trim wheel and trim surfaces until release of trim up key.

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

not relevant

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

1.30.12.0


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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OPā€™s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

1 Like

Any chance this is related to your keyboard setup related to ā€œrepeat delayā€ and ā€œrepeat rateā€ for inputs?
I know the issue seems to definitely affect some people and not others very much at all, so not sure itā€™s something in the sim, or in the keyboard/peripheral setup in windows.
Just some thoughtsā€¦
Regards

Thanks - but itā€™s all default windows.
I could probably change it to suit MSFS.

Bbbbbbuuuuutttttt ttttthhhheeeeennnnnn aaaaallllll mmmmmyyyy eeeeemmmaaiiiilllsss wwwwoooouulllddd lllloookkk llliiikkkeeee tttthhhhiiiissss.

But at least my trim on MSFS would work properly :grinning:

2 Likes

I can see this is still an issue in the latest release.

Having watched some recent youtube videos on MSFS Trim, I can see the same issue in the videos, it seems to go unnoticed by others. The Trim button is pressed and held, thereā€™s an initial tiny trim input then a pause and then a continuous input.

The control setup in MSFS has an input type ā€œOn Pressā€ or ā€œOn Releaseā€. On Press should mean ā€œOn Pressā€. at the moment itā€™s ā€œOn Press then a little pause after Pressā€.

Perhaps add a ā€˜Continuousā€™ option here, so an input is immediate and continuous on press.

ā€¦Or change the ā€œOn Pressā€ option to read ā€œOn Press but with a little pause after Pressā€, because thatā€™s what it actually is doing. Itā€™s a bug, it should not be doing this for Trim input (trim buttons IRL are immediate and continuous, as modeled in every other flight sim in the past 20 years. ).

Then how do you control if you want to do a minor adjustment, or a major change of the trim, as you can do in RL.

The way it has been designed, is if you want a small trim change, you keep hitting the trim button, and it makes small changes. If you want a major change, the you hold it in, and after 1/2 second, the trim moves at that faster rate.

Works very well, once you understand WHY it was designed that way.

OK, so in RL, you do not keep touching the trim wheel with short touching to move it slowly, (well, actually you kind of do , making small corrections@!) but in the sim, with just a button and not actual wheel to trim or quickly spin, the current method works the best it can to achieve both slow & fast trimming.

No. It doesnā€™t work this way IRL for a reason. And every other simulator (PC or otherwise) doesnā€™t do it this way, for a reason.

If you want a small change you just press the button and release.
Or you hold it for a second. Or two seconds.
You get very used to how long you hold it for based on the situation. Both IRL and in Sims.
And the effect on controls is instant (everywhere except MSFS).

In MSFS you press, then holdā€¦and ā€¦keep holding ā€¦itā€™s still not moving ā€¦. and then it moves (okay, it takes half a second to move, but it shouldnā€™t pause at all, its a continual fluid motion). If you want small inputs you just tap it.

To say itā€™s better this way would be like me releasing a car simulator where my car controls worked differently to (a) real life and (b) every other car gameā€¦ā€¦and then me saying ā€œmy way is betterā€

MSFS is supposed to simulate an aircraft, and itā€™s systems (thatā€™s what the second ā€˜Sā€™ is for). but itā€™s not.

Maybe, it works better on XBox controllers? And thatā€™s why itā€™s still like this? In which case it should be called MSFG

2 Likes

No, it DOES move, slowly, with the trim sensitivity to adjustment that you would have in RL.

But it would seem you want 3+ player is a forum, to force a change on 5 Million+ MSFS players.

Personally, I donā€™t care how it gets changed, as I can easily implement my own ā€œover-rideā€ control wishes with AAO or Spad.

Having reviewed the Asobo code that is doing the elevator trim function, (which already has other bugs and issues), the chances that any change to this code will result in something else getting broken in a far worse way.

Thatā€™s how it works at the moment !! :joy:

If you tap it has a short input (though much smaller than irl or any other sim)
My issue is if you hold it then it has a short input, then a pause, then a continuous input.
Its the pause I have an issue with. That doesnā€™t happen in real life. It doesnā€™t happen in any other simulator (certainly not in the past 20 years anyway).

I am surprised that more people arenā€™t complaining about it. For me itā€™s unplayable like this. But, as you say, 5m playersā€¦ā€¦(though I feel that 4,999,999 of them are just saying ā€œoooh but the clouds are soooo prettyā€).

Iā€™ll look for 3rd-party software which can maybe do something (some kind of auto repeat would probably do the job). This is the one thing stopping me using the game, and I think youā€™re right the devs arenā€™t going to fix it.

Suggestions for key-mapping software with some kind of auto-repeat welcomeā€¦(my old saitek x52 joystick had that function, my virpil kit does not)

1 Like

I tried to explain what I think is wrong with the trim implementation in this topic. As far as Iā€™m aware thereā€™s no technical reason why holding a key must behave like it does when typing, and it certainly should do the same when using a button. This is just the way Asobo chose to do it, with apparently very little considereation for its functionality.

Realise the graph in the following post misses the pause which @LostScArLeTt correctly identifies.

I saw that A2A had done something regarding the Comancheā€™s trim input, but havenā€™t got round to checking that out yet.

Bumping this for hopefully some better visibility/urgency (I know duplicate posts about bugs are frowned upon). I just did my first flight on the sim and one of the first things I noticed was how hard it was to trim properly because of this. Trim absolutely does not (in any real world airplane) and should not work this way. Whatever is broken by adjusting it could hardly make it worse IMO.

For what itā€™s worth, my Honeycomb Bravo (which has a trim wheel that works by repeatedly sending a button press signal) also has this issue. It seems that repeatedly pressing a button results in the same initial press, delay, repeated press issue.

1 Like

This happens with all inputs, not just trim. Try binding keys or buttons to the throttle control and youā€™ll see the exact same behaviour.

Incredibly, the same is even true when using keys or buttons for the stick/yoke. Realise thatā€™s very unlikely (unless someoneā€™s stuck using a keyboard) but it illustrates how little consideration Asobo have given any of this stuff.

2 Likes

For the sake of illustrating the problem more clearly, I made a simple (admittedly exaggerated) animation. On the left is how Asobo apparently treat all button inputs in MSFS, on the right is how a held button (whether joystick, gamepad or keyboard) really should be interpretedā€¦

1 Like

Yes, Iā€™m aware that it affects any analog control bound to a button, but trim is the most annoying because even in real airplanes it can be activated by a switch like this.

I made a video as well to demonstrate this for maximum clarity in case anyone still doesnā€™t understand exactly what I mean, alongside an example from X-Plane which handles this correctly. Iā€™d really love to see this fixed as otherwise MSFS seems to be a pretty good simulator.

1 Like

Good video. Iā€™ve been complaining about this issue since release. Nobody seems to get how big an issue it is. Maybe itā€™s only real pilots who notice how bad it is?

You said ā€œThis trim issue alone is enough to limit my desire to fly on this simulatorā€. And I couldnā€™t agree more. I donā€™t use MSFS at all because of this issue.

1 Like

I think part of the problem is that trim sensitivity is wildly different in different planes, so for some planes this behavior doesnā€™t matter, or is good enough to get your tubeliner into autopilot. For some planes and setups, you can just use analog trim instead.

I remember how annoying it was trying to fly the stock C152 or the BN2 from black box any real distance before I added an analog trim wheel to my setup - you are constantly dancing around on the trim buttons to try and get it where it should be.

I would expect to see this persist in MSFS2024, and of course never be addressed for 2020. There are SO many input bugs in this game, and when they added simulation of up to 16 engines a while back, they couldnā€™t manage to enter the corresponding controls. I think that says all you need to know both about the input system and the state of the development on this sim as a whole.

1 Like

It would be really good if they could implement the X-Plane system as demonstated in @UncertifiedFIā€™s video. sPK

I think they are addressed this. There is an initial delay to an input, but much shorter than is used to be. Then the repeat starts. After a while it speeds up. Tested on FS20 DC-3, setting the proppeller control and Blackbox BN-2 Islander :astonished:

This is still present in msfs-2024 and makes precise trim changes very difficult.

1 Like

But at least the clouds are pretty? Right? :slight_smile:
Iā€™m guessing the developers with their xbox controllers know best.