Does the B737 have a working autopilot panel?

1st Official Post

    Just been looking at the pictures of the B737 cockpit on Facebook and it would appear that the autopilot and flight director panel is not working. This would mean that one would have to use the info bar to check the autopilot setting (I am not a fan of info bars). Could IPACS please confirm whether or not the autopilot panel is working in the B737?

    Gary

    It is not clickable panels that I am on about but the top panel that shows autopilot altitude, speed, Hdg and Vs (although the speed isn't displaying and the Vs only goes up in 200ft/min increments on the A320 and B747). This panel can used instead on the flight info bar to check the autopilot settings.

    The 737 will have a working Autopilot panel. The screenshots on Facebook were preliminary. We are doing the final touches on the 737 and will sent a new version to Apple soon.
    The mobile version will not feature any direct cockpit clickable areas. We feel this is just too complicated to get it right on those small displays. That doesn't mean we will never implement it, but it currently has a low priority. Our new PC version will offer clickable cockpit instruments.

    Brilliant! I am looking forward to the 737. Even though clickable panels are far away, what about increased functionality of aircraft systems using on screen buttons or drop down menus?

    Oh and well done on the choice of cockpit in the 737, modern digitised glass cockpits seem to the be the default in many sims.

    • Official Post

    For me any simulator menu bar, panels or flight info take away from the immersion and realism.
    Any function of an aircraft that the real one has should be completed within the virtual cockpit without any additional panels or software outside the simulator. If I want to set the autopilots heading I want to do that through the real interface of that particular aircraft.

    With the click spots in the virtual cockpit we free developers can make almost everything possible then. Before (now) we are limited to the joystick inputs which are not enough to create system depth. We made engines start before and we have fuel consumption implemented today even but without real engine starter etc. that does not make much fun.

    I am eagerly looking forward to the new aerofly :)

    Regards,
    Jan

    Regards,

    Jan

    Jan,
    you are right, but keep in mind you do know a lot more about aviation as other people do.

    Not offering a flight info bar or other 2D displays (especially on small mobile devices!), would simply mean, we loose or overburden a lot of customers. We do run lots of tests with our customers and you would understand our decisions better if you would see how those users "use" the simulator.

    That being said, you can always disable the flight info bar, so if you want, you can fully focus on the cockpit only.

    Our next version will offer revised Auto pilot controls and an optional HUD display. Its our ongoing process of offering a complex product to everybody, e.g. make it usable for the beginner pilot as well as offering a sophisticated flight simulator for the experts out there.

    I've been a proponent of the HUD and wasn't much of a fan of the info bar but since I've been exclusively playing AF2, the info bar has grown on me. I'm still looking forward to an optional HUD but the info bar is essential when flying in any other view than the cockpit view and even then, much easier to read than cockpit instruments. I personally don't see the need for clickable cockpit controls on a mobile device with finger input.

    I quite like the flight info bar, and I find it particularly useful on aeroplanes such as the airbus and the 747 that have small instrument displays packed in close together. On smaller planes that have easier to read instruments like the cessna however, I like to turn the info bar off to try and get myself to use the real instruments. The problem I have with this, is that if I am using the navigation feature I have to have the info bar on. I think it would be good if you could select which instruments the info bar shows so that if you only need the navigation function showing, you could have just that, and the rest of the space at the top would be clear. I also think that the info bar is useful on smaller devices such as the iPhone and iPod as you cant see the real instruments very easily on the small screens.

    EDIT: In fact it would be even better if the navigation feature could be put on the empty clank screen in the Cessna! Even if it is presented in the same way as it is on the info bar, it would be a good option

    Quote from Trisnpod

    I think it would be good if you could select which instruments the info bar shows so that if you only need the navigation function showing, you could have just that, and the rest of the space at the top would be clear.

    Yes, I agree with that. I have often wanted to display just certain information, such as airspeed and AGL, without it taking up so much screen area. It would be great, for example, of you could select items from a list and have them displayed in small type at the bottom left of the screen. Especially for making videos, you want as much unobstructed screen area as possible.

    Quote from Trisnpod

    You can remove the info bar and even the buttons and control inputs completely in settings for maximum realism or making videos which is good.

    True, and I do that when flying in cockpit view where I can read the instruments. But I often want to use chase or camera view for the video to show more of the scenery. I can do fine without the information display unless I am shooting landings or doing aerobatics where you need to manage airspeed precisely. So a small inconspicuous display of airspeed (like frame rate at the lower right) would be helpful for that.

    Now, the sound of the engine gives you a rough idea of throttle setting, but with my setup I can't hear sound while recording the screen because game sound is redirected to the recording app and my speakers are silent. So I have no idea at all what the engine speed is, except from inferior performance of the aircraft, by which point the landing or aerobatic maneuver is blown! :(

    because there is the replay feature on iOS you can do the thing you want to film in cockpit view then when you are recording the replay, turn off flight info bar and set buttons to fade after 5 seconds. Then you can have a clear shot of the plane without anything clogging up parts of the screen but you still get the instruments while you are doing the actual flying.

    Quote from Trisnpod

    because there is the replay feature on iOS you can do the thing you want to film in cockpit view then when you are recording the replay, turn off flight info bar and set buttons to fade after 5 seconds. Then you can have a clear shot of the plane without anything clogging up parts of the screen but you still get the instruments while you are doing the actual flying.

    That is one reason I can't wait to get my hands on FS 2 for the desktop! Hopefully soon. As I pointed out in a an earlier post, and as is clearly demonstrated in donka'a videos, that replay capability is extremely useful for showing different views without having to shoot separate videos as I am currently doing. Ugh!

    Another great potential use of replay is that there may be a way to save the parameters of the flight so that you can watch the flight later without having to actually record the screen, thus avoiding the need to save a huge movie file to disk. The parameter file would be very small in comparison a movie file. Such a file could be posted here or elsewhere, and anyone having FS 2 could replay it without having to stream a video from YouTube or download a 1-3GB movie file from Google Drive. That would be awesome! And that person could select any view they want to watch the replay.