Agressive Autopilot
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Hello! I've been looking at some Starship videos and streams, and I've noticed that the autopilot appears to be too agressive during changes in pitch. I was wondering if this is going to be present in the post-release version, and if so, can it be fixed in a future patch?
Here are a few examples:
https://www.youtube.com/live/BHFD-NwTDoI?si=-DHHsJZABXwsvzIY&t=4254
https://www.youtube.com/live/BHFD-NwTDoI?si=8Y9w5595fPUNN8_C&t=3948 -
I actually discussed that in some of the other videos I've done with streamers/YouTubers this week. In (very) short, the issue is that MSFS really doesn't want to do canard aerodynamics, and I had to put an enormous amount of work into getting us something that I was happy with. This exacerbated a problem inherent to MSFS, which is that autopilots have a hard time controlling light aircraft at extreme altitudes and low dynamic pressures. Real autopilots have complex control laws to compensate for these aerodynamic instabilities, but no such thing is available to me natively in MSFS. For this reason, the compromise was: True canard aerodynamics in exchange for a slightly overzealous autopilot in one control mode.
I hope you might see how I would arrive at this compromise. This is atop my list of things to revisit before release, but it was difficult enough arriving at the current solution that I don't automatically assume there is another sweet spot for me to find. If I can make any improvements, you will see them in the v1.0 Changelog, which covers all changes made since the first public previews.
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Got it! Thank you for the response and congratulations on what you've managed to do with the Starship.
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And I appreciate your understanding of the compromises that must be made when working within the limitations of someone else's software! Since this is atop my list, I will be starting my investigation in just a minute, and will let you know what I find.
