Autopilot

[Kethevin]

I am not inexperienced.

Is anyone having difficulty getting autopilot to work? I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

[Kethevin]

Surely it wasn't removed from the simulation was it???

This is the instructions I found online:
To activate autopilot in Microsoft Flight Simulator, you’ll need to open up the main menu. In the main menu, there’s a symbol of a man’s head. Select this and you’ll open up a sub-menu featuring three AI Control options.

In this AI Control sub-menu, you’ll find a Control Aircraft setting which you can toggle on or off. Turning Control Aircraft on will activate the autopilot, allowing the game’s AI to fly your plane for you.

To speed up the process, you can also hit CTRL - ALT - X to quickly activate or deactivate the game’s autopilot.

[Kethevin]

To be clear, I am NOT talking ab out the co-pilot. I want the plane's autopilot, with the speed, heading, etc controls.

[Person012345]

The autopilot is in the plane. There will be a panel for it. Which plane are you flying?

[ChakLong]

Can't get the auto-pilot to work in the 747 either, doesn't obey vertical speed or altitude holds, only speed. And for the AI control (co-pilot controlling the aircraft), they only ever want to dive and crash anyways (if they don't rip the aircraft apart first).

[VoodooKing]

This is my first sim so bear with me.

Ok from what I gathered playing, the co-pilot (the Pilot head from the menu) is absolutely different from the autopilot that are in the jetliners. Co-pilot will attempt to follow the flight navigation set before you click "Fly". Co-pilot absolutely sucks at flying airliners, it weaves left and right and cannot seem to fly straight.

For autopilot, you will need to program the FMS on the airliners, start in the airport that you want to fly without a destination. Once programmed with a destination, you can take off, climb to crusing alt and turn on the autopilot, it will fly all the way to the destination on its own. I had to learn it from Youtube. It is very fun indeed, I learnt about using the ILS on the 320 and made my first ILS landing.

Programming the FMS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_tBRzN649Y

and ILS landing from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hdnqzxeL2U&

[valman100]

@voodooking - How did you get past the problem of no airports being in the FMS database?

I actually found the video from Drawyah and wen't to follow it but couldn't because I kept getting the issue of "not in database" when entering the ICAO codes. I even tried it with the ones that he used.

I came to the conclusion that he had purchased a 3rd party database from somewhere and was using that - i.e. that the FMS is empty within the base sim.

Did you also have to buy and download an FMS database or am I missing something in my programming of the FMS itself?

[Person012345]

引用自 VoodooKing：

This is my first sim so bear with me.

Ok from what I gathered playing, the co-pilot (the Pilot head from the menu) is absolutely different from the autopilot that are in the jetliners. Co-pilot will attempt to follow the flight navigation set before you click "Fly". Co-pilot absolutely sucks at flying airliners, it weaves left and right and cannot seem to fly straight.

For autopilot, you will need to program the FMS on the airliners, start in the airport that you want to fly without a destination. Once programmed with a destination, you can take off, climb to crusing alt and turn on the autopilot, it will fly all the way to the destination on its own. I had to learn it from Youtube. It is very fun indeed, I learnt about using the ILS on the 320 and made my first ILS landing.

Basically all the aircraft have autopilots of varying sophistication. They can range from,like you said, basically having the plane fly itself from start to finish to simple holding of various variables like altitude, heading etc. on GA planes. But they're all there. And ILS is a slightly different thing but very useful. I think a lot of the complaints about the A320's autopilot is simply people who don't know how to use it, I just flew from San Francisco to Atlanta with no issues.

[VoodooKing]

引用自 valman100：

@voodooking - How did you get past the problem of no airports being in the FMS database?

I actually found the video from Drawyah and wen't to follow it but couldn't because I kept getting the issue of "not in database" when entering the ICAO codes. I even tried it with the ones that he used.

I came to the conclusion that he had purchased a 3rd party database from somewhere and was using that - i.e. that the FMS is empty within the base sim.

Did you also have to buy and download an FMS database or am I missing something in my programming of the FMS itself?

Hi, no I did not buy anything. Some WP given by route generators like MASB4F MASBO A457 GUPTA BOBI1P, if you enter MASB4F, it may say not in database so I entered MASB and it works, sometimes you may get a few options to choose from like MASB may have one waypoint in the north and the other slightly to the south, something like that.

For the A320, follow Drawyah's video to the letter. Click on INIT and enter the ICAO codes of both departure and destination in the format DDDD/TTTT . For example Singapore Changi Airport to Kuala Lumpur international airport would be WSSS/WMKK.

After than click on the departure airport and click airways and enter the waypoints one at a time.

Also, you will need to monitor the airspeed and altitude manually (the knobs in the front center pane) during the flight while on autopilot as ATC may give you FL altitudes from the flight plan.

[VoodooKing]

引用自 Person012345：

Basically all the aircraft have autopilots of varying sophistication. They can range from,like you said, basically having the plane fly itself from start to finish to simple holding of various variables like altitude, heading etc. on GA planes. But they're all there. And ILS is a slightly different thing but very useful. I think a lot of the complaints about the A320's autopilot is simply people who don't know how to use it, I just flew from San Francisco to Atlanta with no issues.

Yes, the co-pilot is great at flying prop planes and landing them as well. I'm going to try to program the A320 FMS and enable the co-pilot and see if it hands over to the planes' auto-pilot and if it can handle landing.

I've yet to try the 787 though. Still gotta find a YT video for the FMS.

[VoodooKing]

Anyway to create flightplans, you can go to simbrief.com and sign up an account. Then download the FMS downloader program from the website.There is a plugin for it in FS2020

Once you start creating flightplans and save, you can download the pln file using the program and load it into FS2020 if you don't feel like messing with the FSM, you may need to set up the destination ILS runway once in the cockpit though. Although I would recommend playing with the FSM to learn the manual way.

[VoodooKing]

So here's my experience with the co-pilot on the A320, it absolutely has a mind of its own, It took off and then instead of heading to the next waypoint, it decides to fly one big round to the airport again, I turned off the co-pilot and turned on the autopilot, it adjusted course and flew to the next waypoint.

Landing, the co-pilot absolutely cannot land the A320 during my session, I had set it up for an ILS run but then it decided to fly somewhere else and make its own big turn far away from the airport for some reason. I got annoyed flew back to the LEG and landed myself. Lol, co-pilot is annoying for sure.