SAS requires a serious overhaul

[MarcAbaddon]

Just built my first plane and it flies ok - without SAS. Once you have SAS enabled the control surfaces start rapidly flapping up and down like the plane is a Kolibri - and this in turns leads to a wildly fluctuating lift-drag ratio. Not good for handling the plane.

I also had a case in orbit which I could not easily reproduce, where I had a medium sized vessel in orbit with a Poodle engine and the small 1 kerbal pod, without RCS or an reaction wheel. Once I throttled up my engine (which has decent gimbal) even though my craft was already oriented pro-grade it started spinning very rapidly out of control with the gimbaling engine wildly changing angles.

So in summary - I think the current SAS implementation has serious issues both for planes and spacecrafts.  For spacecrafts I did a total of 3 flights so far and it only happened on one, so it's definitely not as bad there as for planes.

As a more humoring aside, when it tried landing my plane it literally hopped up like bunny when touching the ground. 

[sjsharks39]

I have too notice the SAS in general in any flight scenario seems to be overtuned, or just need tuning in general with rockets, planes, etc. Guessing the PID's need some heavy tuning.

[Skorj]

Bad PIDs were one of the key things that needed fixing from KSP1!  C'mon, there's a point at which you abandon the PIDs and just point the craft the right way and kill rotation - this should happen whenever the craft is nearly at the correct attitude with low angular momentum.   Let the PIDs work the simulation to get it close, and then cheat and make the UI actually work.

[Profugo Barbatus]

I'd also really like to see it release the last control setting when I take over and start giving inputs, like in KSP1. "Up" is great for controlling descent speed for landing, but when I'm trying to tilt to now kill the remaining horizontal velocity, it comes in and keeps trying to hard pull me to 'up', so I'm fighting controls constantly. Since the only hotkey is "On/Off" I just have to give up on SAS in landing approach and wing it.

[Dinkledash]

I agree, my elevators were overcontrolling with SAS on takeoff, but I turned it back on when I was landing and it was really smooth.  Maybe it's only an problem when you're at high thrust relative to your speed?

Edited February 24, 2023 by Dinkledash
elevators aren't flaps