Problem with autopilot operation / disconnect in general

Hello,
the autopilot behaviour seems to be wrong entirely and it seems to be a problem within the sim engine. I have no knowledge about the internals I only can guess here. It seems that the simulated a/p adds “correction values” to the given control input per axis and removes them instantly when “disconnecting” the autopilot. This is observable in all aircraft from a clean install on.

You can verify what I mean for the aileron axis when testing the a/p on the ground. Like in a real airplane in active HDG mode the yoke (the aileron servo) follows the heading bug and the simulated yoke turns accordingly. A press on the „A/P disengage“ button should disengage the servo and the aileron „axis“ would be exposed only to its „natural“ forces again (in this case none parking at the ground) what means the yoke would stay in the last position it was moved by the servo. In the sim though it „snaps“ back to „neutral“ instantly, what is clearly wrong.

Same is the case in flight. Disconnecting the A/P not only leaves the plane in a heavily untrimmed position (elevator trim does not follwow the elevator servo to neutralize forces). It seems all snaps back to the positions the controls had at the time the autopilot was activated.

Is this problem known already and is there maybe a tweak or config setting to corrct this?
Thanks!!

That depends on the aircraft. In a conventional aircraft the yoke will go back to neutral (although not snap) and deviate from the last AP attitude. I recently read the final report about a 777 incident due to this AO-2023-003 | TAIC.

No it does not, but I should have made it clearer that I mean GA aircraft with cables and pullies, not the fly-by-wire bigger Jets. That’s a different story, that’s right.
I am an owner / operator of a wonderful GFC500-GI275-GTN750 retrofit surrounded ba a wonderful Cessna Cardinal RG and I would consider this to be a (in your terms) “conventional” aircraft.
For those aircraft the simulated autopilot in MSFS2020 behaves totally wrong. According to a WT guy that I had a brief conversation with, the logic is a black box inside the sim engine. My hope was to be able to tweak this from outside (e.g. systems.cfg…).
The alternative is to sell the expensive force feedback setup and to go to war in DCS.

1 Like