What is required for autoflight (tracking the green route) in the Learjet 45?

1st Official Post

    All of a sudden I am unable to engage autoflight in the Learjet 45. I have done this literally hundreds of times, but not a single time today, or yesterday.

    I thought all that was required was a valid Flight Plan prepared using the Navigation page, and engaging the C/P onscreen option by clicking on the On/Off and Route boxes, the two far left boxes in the lower right of the screen. I am assuming that I need to be headed in the general direction of the route and at a high enough altitude for Autopilot operation.

    This no longer works for me. The NAV function is totally ignored as well as the magenta Altitude selection for the route.

    Any ideas to get me back on track? I ran the valid file integrity check routine and had 14 bad files that was corrected by Steam and I then reran the check and all files are reported to be correct and valid.

    Regards,

    Ray

    • Official Post

    Ray,
    some are experiencing a bug in the autopilot system in all aircraft. Even though this is actually working for me and I can't seem to replicate the issue, Jan is working on a patch and should have if fixed shortly.
    I'm just mystified that i'm not seeing this issue on 3 testing machines with different GPU's but the magic bullet here may be that Windows update that many are complaining about breaking things, it's the only update that I did NOT run yet.

    Have no fear though, this will be resolved shortly.

    Jeff

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    • Official Post

    Hi Ray,
    I've informed our developers. They will look into it.

    I'm still working quite a bit on my autopilot, it's working really great but I'm still finding a few bugs here and there.
    With one powerful autopilot for all different variants of aircraft: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier,... 14 lateral modes, 27 vertical modes, 10 autothrottle modes the permutations are just so many, it's really hard to test all combinations in all aircraft. But I'm finding fewer and fewer bugs so it's looking quite well. Now the primary task is implementing all of the great new features into all aircraft.

    Regards,
    Jan

    Quote from Jet-Pack

    Hi Ray,
    I've informed our developers. They will look into it.

    I'm still working quite a bit on my autopilot, it's working really great but I'm still finding a few bugs here and there.
    With one powerful autopilot for all different variants of aircraft: Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier,... 14 lateral modes, 27 vertical modes, 10 autothrottle modes the permutations are just so many, it's really hard to test all combinations in all aircraft. But I'm finding fewer and fewer bugs so it's looking quite well. Now the primary task is implementing all of the great new features into all aircraft.

    Regards,
    Jan

    Hello Jan,
    Yes, that sounds like a monumental task indeed. I suspect this will require several updates and reworks to get all the fixes for the individual planes.

    Regards,
    Ray

    Quote from IPACS Support

    Ray, please, don't be so pessimistic, Jan knows his business :)

    More practical than pessimistic. There is no doubt whatsoever that Jan is a true gem, but wrapping your head around a mix of autopilots by Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and a few others, all with different FMS units, some with autothrottles, some without is surely a daunting task and will no doubt require some extended beta testing. Expecting to get it right the first time is probably asking too much from anyone.

    Adding these new and improved autopilots to the entire fleet will no doubt generate a whole new level of tech savvy simulator pilots, who will then ask for more and more systems depth and complexity.

    I, for one, am looking forward to these more practical cockpits with working FMS units to build and fly realistic flight plans and procedures. Hopefully, we will be able to manage fuel flows and engine performance levels while using an ATC system with controllable weather and traffic.

    The future looks bright indeed.

    Regards,
    Ray

    • Official Post
    Quote from IPACS Support

    Ray, please, don't be so pessimistic, Jan knows his business :)


    Thanks :D
    Well I was about to say: I've been working on the Autopilot for quite some time now, it actually works quite well, but I'm also sure that there will be ways to use the autopilot that I have not thought off. The typical way real airline pilots would use it should work flawlessly unless I really made mistakes at some point. There will be scenarios where we don't know what the real world autopilot would do and the real autopilots aren't bug free either, so yeah. I'm really looking forward to you testing the a/p after the big uptate. I think it will be a major improvement and I really hope there won't be that many bugs left.
    I'm going for one, max. two updates for fixes, none would be reall nice :D

    The updates that will come after the autopilot will probably just be more content for the aircraft, we're currently implementing a lot for the aircraft but I'm sure we will never be finishe :D

    Cheers,
    Jan

    • Official Post

    Hi Ray,

    Please don't expect any FMSes from the autopilot update. The autopilot will have few more things from our internal FMS (like display the top of descent on the ND) but there won't be a clickable CDU/MCDU coming with that autopilot update. To my knowledge we intend to add CDUs/MCDUs "FMCs/FMSes" later on. That will be another update with a lot of work that has to be done. We'll get there bug maybe there are other things in the mean time that are higher on the priority list.

    Regards,
    Jan