F-15 Navigation and autopilot controls in VR

  • I have been playing with the F-16 in VR mode. I seem to be having a problem getting certain things to work as far as controlling the autopilot and navigation settings.

    I can turn the autopilot on but once that it done the buttons seem to be locked and will not respond. I did find a A/P button below the primary display where I can get control of the airplane back but that even seems a little strange.

    I cannot find any buttons or switches or whatever to change the selected heading or altitude since very little seems to be active. The formation switch is active, whatever that is.

    I have not actually flown the airplane so I am not familiar with the normal operations but was wondering if anyone else running the latest Win 10 release was seeing such an issue.

    Thanks..

    HTC Vive Cosmos Elite

    Win 11

    • Official Post

    Where did you get an F-16 from? We only have an F15e or F18c

    The F15 and F18 autopilots have a little different autopilot, they are controlled via the up front control (UFC) which is centered in front of you. In the F15 it has red text with the first line saying "A/P", in the F18 the text is green.

    Press the line select buttons to the left of the text that represents the mode you want.

    E.g. in the F18 press the button next to "ATT" to engage attitude hold. Press "BALT" to hold the current barometric altitude or "RALT" to maintain a radio altimeter altitude or height above ground (follows the terrain up and down).

    If you press "HSEL" the aircraft turns towards the selected heading which you can set on the lower display. The heading is selected with a switch that is labeled "HDG", which you find to the left and above the lower display. Use your mouse wheel to select another heading, which might be a bit tricky in VR if you're just using VR hands. We might add in that you can hold the switch to either position to constantly increment the heading until you let go.

    In the F15 you have one line select key that toggles between RDR (radar altitude) and BARO (barometric altitude). Once you made the selection you can press "ALT HOLD" to engage altitude hold (either radar terrain following or barometric altitude hold). When you press the button next to "STR MODE" you can select attitude hold or heading. I'm just now seeing that you can't seem to get back from HSEL to ATT, that will be fixed with the next updates. We plan to add the coupled mode at some point, that allows you to capture VOR or TACAN radials... But there haven't been many requests for this so far...


    If you select the "ATT" (or attitude hold) function you can change the attitude by trimming pitch up/down or aileron left/right. This is also not really possible with VR hand controllers but we will probably add in the clickspot for the hat switch on the simulated flight stick, then you can trim the aircraft and steer it with autopilot engaged. But that is all very difficult to simulate, ideally you would have an exact copy of the F18 stick with all its levers, buttons and switches.

    The A/P button on the up front controller (UFC) actually doesn't turn on the autopilot in real live, we will change that in the future. It only brings up the autopilot menu, which is currently shown all the time. As soon as you press either "STR MODE" or "ALT HOLD" the autopilot engages right away, and in both fighters the autopilot disengages as soon as you deflect the stick, so there is no need for a real autopilot master button. Also the pilot has a lever on his stick to disengage the autopilot and take over... Holding down that same switch on the ground enables a higher range of nose wheel steering, too, which is also simulated in the F18 and F15 (I think)

  • OK, you caught me, just shows how little I know about those airplanes. The Strike Eagle is the one available.

    both fighters the autopilot disengages as soon as you deflect the stick

    Doesn't seem to disengage in the F-15. I have moved the stick in big circles and nothing will change.

    Not being able to change the heading is a little strange. Setting a VOR course an any other component of the NAV display seems to be inoperable. It isn't a big deal for me right now since I am spending more time learning how to land a tail dragger... I did want to confirm the situation was not just due to the new Win 10 version.

    Thanks.

    HTC Vive Cosmos Elite

    Win 11

  • I have another question related to F-15 avionics. I know, that even though now there is no clickable button in cockpit to set heading for autopilot, this function can be assigned to keybord and it works correctly. But I would like to ask if there is possible to set course in similar way (I can not find this function in option menu)? Now course shown in right MFD of F-15 is set permanently to 90 degrees. Changing course would make navigation in this plane much easier allowing for instance finding radial for VOR stations easier.