Next Gen Autopilot

[woxofswa]

One of the reasons that I have been interested in the Dynon Next Gen is the integration of the autopilot.
However, I have been reading some autopilot reviews on other forums and to be honest, they haven't been all that glowing.

My question is, as part of the next gen development, is there work also being done on the autopilot as well? Can you share some technical reasons that the NG A/P will have better performance than the current system? Or is the A/P system what it is and it will be be the same product then as now?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dynonsupport]

Think of the autopilot as sort of a separate product. As we enhance its performance over time, both our current and next generation products will benefit from the R&D in that area through firmare updates.

 

[woxofswa]

So if I understand correctly, any and all improvements to the A/P will be universal, and there are no inherent technical advances in the NG boxes that will improve A/P performance.

 

[dynonsupport]

Right - the only way they'll differ in raw performance is if the software releases get out of sync with each other (which is likely). This would mean that one line would get improvements before the other.

However, it's easy to imagine feature-level differences between the autopilot capability between the two products. For example, the next gen products could conceivably support vertical navigation via its own moving map software. On the current line of products, that would depend on the AP76, which is on hold indefinitely at the moment.