auto trimmer option in new beta update...

Will putting a check mark in the option box to enable auto trimmer allow for a more realistic flight behavior or is it considered a cheat?

Thank you.

if the auto trimmer imply what im thinking ( trimming the plane for you in case of asymmetric load ) so i dont think its considered a cheat its just save you the few buttons that u would use on ur hotas for trimming .

i didnt know they added such option i gotta try it .

It's not realistic, you're supposed to trim the aircraft yourself. If an aircraft has an auto-trimming function, it'll be implemented by default, as part of its FCS, so again, you shouldn't check the auto-trim box if you want to stay realistic. As for what it does, I've never enabled the auto-trim option, but I assume that it trims to account for airspeed and weight load changes, so you don't have to.

Auto trim is an option to be used in the upcoming MAC, they are using DCS as a testbed. Don't use auto trim.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3944526&postcount=16

I hope it works out better than in another sim. There, if you bank into a slightly longer turn of course you are pulling the stick back for the whole turn. When you roll out level the thing thinks you still need a bunch of up trim so the plane climbs like crazy. It made the FA18 nearly unflyable. And even in normal straight level flight, it didn't do a good job of keeping the plane at the same altitude. OTOH, that is exactly what led me to find DCS.

As simo1000rr pointed it out, this is a great option for peoples with Joys who don't have many buttons or peoples with Hotas who want to use the trim hat for something else (camera movement for those who don't have TIR or VR headset for example).

Imagine someone with the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (one of the most popular Joystick) but still want to fly aircraft with advanced avionic and HOTAS like the A10C or the Hornet, he already need to release the joy to use the keyboard to use most command that normally are done hand on, so auto trim can help greatly, this is more unrealistic to be forced to use a keyboard than having auto trim.

I don't see it as cheating, just as a tool, mainly considering that trimming is a really easy and simple task to do, this isn't as if it was skill demanding, auto start is way more a cheat than that, on Helicopters tho one might argue that trimming require a minimum skill level to be accomplished.

@CBStu Well if it just compensate for asymmetrical load and speed, it won't affect how we fly during turn and other maneuvers which is the way to go.

Thanks all for your input!

How would it work out for carrier landings where you need to trim for approach?

Once they get it working right, you should be able to command a rate with stick inputs and hold an attitude when there are no stick inputs. Some aircraft hold an alpha instead of an attitude, particularly when the gear is down. Right now, AutoTrimmer is sluggish and seems to only slightly reduce trimming workload with fix-wing aircraft. It works slightly worse for helos in some ways and slightly better in other respects. Looks like it needs some improvement.

So you're saying that you would push stick left to command a specific roll rate, rate would maintain when stick centered, then push stick right to reduce roll rate?

Sounds like my own personal hell...

So you're saying that you would push stick left to command a specific roll rate, rate would maintain when stick centered, then push stick right to reduce roll rate?

 

Sounds like my own personal hell...

Hah hah hah... no, you command a rate with input and it holds an attitude when inputs end. You skipped a part I think. You're definitely describing the yaw trimmer option in Black Shark in some situations, though :-)

Oh OK :).

I was like WHY!!??!??!!! :)

If that were how it worked, MAC with a keyboard would actually work ..

So you're saying that you would push stick left to command a specific roll rate, rate would maintain when stick centered, then push stick right to reduce roll rate?

 

Sounds like my own personal hell...

Back in the day there was a nice sim with lots of flyable planes for the AMIGA that actually just behaved like this if you didn't have an analog stick like me... that was hell, but the sim was so awesome nevertheless due to its sheer variety of possibilities.

I've seen auto trim in a few sims, and it always added a slight trim input the same way the control inputs were made, so you'd slowly progress back to the center while trying to hold attitude.

If that were how it worked, MAC with a keyboard would actually work ..

I don't fly Longbow 2, EECH, nor X-Plane with a keyboard. Do people fly the F-16 with a keyboard in DCS? Did the Gemini astronauts maneuver with a keyboard when docking? Did Neil Armstrong land on the moon with a keyboard?

Back in the day there was a nice sim with lots of flyable planes for the AMIGA that actually just behaved like this if you didn't have an analog stick like me... that was hell, but the sim was so awesome nevertheless due to its sheer variety of possibilities.

 

 

I've seen auto trim in a few sims, and it always added a slight trim input the same way the control inputs were made, so you'd slowly progress back to the center while trying to hold attitude.

OMG that was "Birds OF Prey" and it WAS my own personal hell. It was a pretty good attempt at a "flight sim" with a lot of my favorite aircraft at the time but it turned out that the programmer had absolutely no clue how planes actually flew or how a flight sim should work. You had to knock the stick to one side a few times to give the plane some roll to start turning then knock it back the other way to stop the roll and let the plane turn for a while. If you didn't the plane would just keep corkscrewing through the sky.

Lol watch this to see how far we've (I've) come. Birds of Prey is from the prehistoric era of computer flight simulators.

Did Neil Armstrong land on the moon with a keyboard?

Actually I think he did. It was called the DSKY or The DSKEY (dis-key) input module which operated the AGC.

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidance, navigation, and control of the spacecraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

There was no "joystick" on the Lunar Landing Module.

The DSKEY input module (right) shown alongside the Apollo Guidance Computer's main casing (left).

Actually I think he did. It was called the DSKY or The DSKEY (dis-key) input module which operated the AGC.

 

The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidance, navigation, and control of the spacecraft.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer

 

There was no "joystick" on the Lunar Landing Module.

 

 

 

 

The DSKEY input module (right) shown alongside the Apollo Guidance Computer's main casing (left).

Rotation:

Translation:

Inside the LM:

Here he is flying the demonstrator:

And ejecting from it:

There were manual controls in the module and it's how Apollo 11 actually executed that touch down. And the primary AFCS mode for both manual moon landing and for Apollo and Gemini orbital docking was rate command, attitude hold for the joystick. I'm not talking about interplanetary navigation or orbital capture. The guidance computers had an issue of timing-out during final descent stages, anyway, so I believe even the later Apollo landings did their touch downs manually and defeated the autopilot, too. The computer's biggest role during the actual landing was controlling the length and intensity of the initial de-orbit burn.

There were manual controls in the module and it's how Apollo 11 actually executed that touch down. And the primary AFCS mode for both manual moon landing and for Apollo and Gemini orbital docking was rate command, attitude hold for the joystick. I'm not talking about interplanetary navigation or orbital capture. The guidance computers had an issue of timing-out during final descent stages, anyway, so I believe even the later Apollo landings did their touch downs manually and defeated the autopilot, too. The computer's biggest role during the actual landing was controlling the length and intensity of the initial de-orbit burn.

The AGC was essential from the moment they undocked the LEM to the moment they landed, and again from the time they took off to the time they docked. The landing, never mind the whole mission, would not have been possible without the AGC. Manual is a bit of a misnomer with regards to the LEM control philosophy, too.

The LEM had no direct actuation of RCS. It was entirely FBW through the AGC. If the AGC went offline, they fell back to the AGS (abort guidance section, a backup computer). If neither was available, they floated in space until they were rescued or died. There was no manual control available.

When Apollo 11 touched down, their final modes included rate based attitude, and commanded vertical speed. The same modes every other landing occurred in, even those without computer alarms. The only time there was a computer issue was during the Apollo 11 landing, and the FBW (including the DAP, digital autopilot) was functioning the whole time. Had it not been, an abort would have been mandatory to save the crew. The DSKY was blank for extended periods (updating it was a "low priority" job and was disregarded), and they couldn't keep an updated display up, but that was okay, Houston radioed up what they needed from the missing display.

Fortunately, due to the functionality of the scheduler inside the executive (a primitive scheduler akin to an operating system on the AGC), the computer understood the priority of operating programs and was able to maintain state and execution operations in order to keep the crew alive and touch them down.

There was no manual control available.

 

 

When Apollo 11 touched down, their final modes included rate based attitude, and commanded vertical speed.

Interesting, though I've never seen anyone claim that something like the F-16 stick is not "manual control" just because there's a FBW intermediary going on in between the stick inputs and what the ship control surfaces (or in the case of the LM, the RCS) is doing. As for "rate based attitude", that's rotational rate commanding with input and attitude hold without. I never said the stick directly controlled the thrusters with a physical pully or something. That's kind of a given.

Other common AFCS modes, including on FBW helos for landing with gear down, are the commanding of lateral velocities with the stick (when stick inputs are zero, ship attempts to maintain position) and vertical velocity with some other flight control, such as the collective or a lever on it.

***

I have figured out some issues with the new AutoTrimmer:

1) It appears separate from the manual trim state and requires the manual trim state to be completely cleared, otherwise you get a limitation of the full available deflection in the opposite direction of the manual trim state.

2) And rather than apply additional control input from the current AutoTrimmer attitude hold state, new stick input completely overrides the AutoTrimmer background state, causing it to bounce down to lesser stick inputs. Weeble wobble effect. Not fun. Makes fine inputs with AutoTrimmer on in options pretty much impossible.

Close to being useable, though.

M1Combat, so you're saying that... the moon is made of cheese and NASA hoaxed the landings badly on purpose showing multiple shadows in photos, so what even the craziest conspiracy theorists would miss, is the baby-bel miniature cheeses might actually have been 5000 year old alien cheese recovered from lunar craters?

I know I'm talking twaddle, but this "so you're saying that..." Meme where people then go onto say nothing like what the original post said gets my panties rotating around the Z axis.

The auto trim should work as Reticuli stated, and nothing to do with auto trimming rates of roll by sideways stick movements. It might trim out asymmetrical loadouts automatically.

There was a question mark. Like so --> ?

It was a question. I was asking if it worked like that. He replied that it did not.

Also... what meme are you referencing? I'm unclear about that. You know that a meme is a picture... not a concept?

Back on subject, the Autotrim option is in 2.5.5 (not beta) and it can cause some odd behavior if ticked, I just posted this with a video link showing it yesterday in the P51 forum -

"I have deadzone set to zero and in the calibration screen it shows even the slightest deviation from the center axis in both X and Y and re-centers perfectly every time. The issue is in the sim when flying, I move the stick slightly and nothing happens for the first few degrees, then it (the game stick) jumps to the current joystick position all at once. Watching the stick in the plane shows this clearly, no movement for first few degrees of motion then bam, stick pops. It's like its storing the start of movement and then sending it all at once after 1 sec or so. After this first few degrees of movement all is well and inputs on the stick parallel my movements exactly. This occurs in both the X and Y axis."

This was solved by un-ticking Autotrim... the 10 sec. video is here, keep in mind I am slowly moving the stick for 2-3 seconds before the stick jumps each time..

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4026201&postcount=3

Back on subject, the Autotrim option is in 2.5.5 (not beta) and it can cause some odd behavior if ticked, I just posted this with a video link showing it yesterday in the P51 forum -

"I have deadzone set to zero and in the calibration screen it shows even the slightest deviation from the center axis in both X and Y and re-centers perfectly every time. The issue is in the sim when flying, I move the stick slightly and nothing happens for the first few degrees, then it (the game stick) jumps to the current joystick position all at once. Watching the stick in the plane shows this clearly, no movement for first few degrees of motion then bam, stick pops. It's like its storing the start of movement and then sending it all at once after 1 sec or so. After this first few degrees of movement all is well and inputs on the stick parallel my movements exactly. This occurs in both the X and Y axis."

 

This was solved by un-ticking Autotrim... the 10 sec. video is here, keep in mind I am slowly moving the stick for 2-3 seconds before the stick jumps each time..

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=4026201&postcount=3

You might want to turn on the red controls indicator box to have a better idea what it's doing in the background.

Right now you have to make sure all your in-sim manual trim states are completely clear before using AutoTrimmer and don't apply manual trim in-sim later when it's on. The AutoTrimmer also unfortunately doesn't apply additional deflection and hold trim from its current AutoTrimmer trim position, but rather jumps down to a less input (with a detection lag) starting from center as you move the joystick again from center. It's also laggy overall and generally inaccurate and poor authority how it's attempting to automatically hold an attitude, to say nothing of the weeble wobble effect when you try to command a rotation rate.

Where did this option go in the menus?