Arrow III autopilot
-
Since you are making informative posts about the AP, I'm wondering whether you know anything a out the following problem:
I am unable to bind the “Heading hold” autopilot rocker switch to any keyboard key or joystick button for some reason.
Shouldn’t it be the “Heading mode ON” and “OFF” functions that I would expect to have to bind to? When I assign these functions, they work in every other plane except the Arrow - that switch doesn’t move unless I use the mouse!
The "altitude hold" switch works fine, no problem binding it at all. So why is the heading one differnt? Does that switch simply not correspond to the "AP heading hold" in other planes?
Has anyone managed to bind this heading hold switch to ON/OFF? Is it possible at all?
Would be really thankful for any hints!(I’m not interested in the “toggle” version btw - I need ON/Off as I am trying to bind to a physical switch with 2 states. But as I said, I can't even bind it to keyboard key)
-
@bearsarecool Unfortunately idk how to help you there, I tried it myself and observed the same thing you said. I use SPAD.neXt to control LVars directly which works great.
I would recommend creating a support ticket though (https://support.justflight.com/support/tickets/new), they usually can help if there is a solution or if not they might add it in a future update
-
@n293wk Thanks, already created a ticket.
How can Spad.Next fix this problem though?
The problem is not between the device and the simvar, but between the simvar and the plane. Heading ON/OFF exist as simvars, but for some reason they dont have any effect on the plane.
Its the same for the NAV hold and the others too - only the toggle vars work (except alt hold, which doesnt even have an actual button)
-
@bearsarecool SPAD.neXt can control LVars directly, which exist at a lower level than simvars. Simvars are meant to be easier to work with, while LVars give developers more fine-grained control over aspects of the model. Also, simvars are generally more limiting to prevent people from messing things up, while LVars often don't have such protections and allow values to be set to whatever you want
-
@bearsarecool This can be done with the in-game dev tools. With developer mode enabled in settings, open the console window and click the "Local Behavior" tab, and there will be a list of LVars that update in real time (those steps are from memory, so I apologize if they are incorrect). SPAD can show you the current state of LVars but it won't refresh until you reopen the window so viewing them in-game is much better
-
@n293wk I tried this but the console window doesn't have a tab called "Local Behavior", it just shows Errors/Warnings/Messages.
Do you perhaps mean the "Behaviors" window?
This one has a tab called "InputEvents", but for some reason it only contains three autopilot actions that just change the heading bug.Do you perhapps know of any documentation that describes the feature you are talking about?
EDIT: I have tried Spad.Next event monitor but it's not helping at all. Apparently that the heading hold button triggers is: AP_HDG_HOLD_ON
But binding this event to a button on my throttle does not trigger the rocker switch (despite the fact that it IS "in theory" triggering the heading hold, which I can see on my multipanel, where HDG lights up). It makes no sense...
-
Hmmm… took a look at what mine was bound to as it works fine, event AP_HDG_HOLD. It does however seem to be a toggle, as setting it to 0 or 1 makes no difference.
There is supposed to be an lvar, L:AUTOPILOT_hdg but it doesn’t seem to be coming through spad for some reason.
-
@weptburrito I use
LVAR:AUTOPILOT_ONOFF
for the AP switch andLVAR:AUTOPILOT_HDG
for the heading switch, setting them to 0 or 1 has the expected effect -
@n293wk yeah, those are what I would assume as they are in the xml code for the switches, but spad isn't showing those to me. This isn't the first time I've had variables not showing up, I might need to reinstall spad or the lvar bridge.