Question about Cursor Slews, HSD and Autopilot

[MeanJim]

I had a thought the other night.  I was doing a long range strike mission on a MP server and was about to RTB.  One of the first things I do when switching back to NAV mode is to make sure to press CZ on the HSD, but I got interrupted by some fighters.  When I was safe, I just enabled the autopilot on NAV hold while I checked my fuel status.  Shortly after that I realized I didn't cursor zero because the steerpoint in the HUD was off.

That's when the thought occurred.  How is the autopilot going to the correct place if the system has a offset the steerpoints due to cursor slews?  Shouldn't the steerpoints and route in the HSD also be offset by the slew?  I just had a quick re-read through in the manual sections on slewing and navigation, and it even has a section on doing a quick, temporary fix to INS drift by using cursor slewing.

[d0ppler]

The autopilot doesn’t care about offsets/spi. It goes towards the active stpt location

[Dača]

On 11/13/2025 at 11:50 PM, MeanJim said:

I had a thought the other night.  I was doing a long range strike mission on a MP server and was about to RTB.  One of the first things I do when switching back to NAV mode is to make sure to press CZ on the HSD, but I got interrupted by some fighters.  When I was safe, I just enabled the autopilot on NAV hold while I checked my fuel status.  Shortly after that I realized I didn't cursor zero because the steerpoint in the HUD was off.

That's when the thought occurred.  How is the autopilot going to the correct place if the system has a offset the steerpoints due to cursor slews?  Shouldn't the steerpoints and route in the HSD also be offset by the slew?  I just had a quick re-read through in the manual sections on slewing and navigation, and it even has a section on doing a quick, temporary fix to INS drift by using cursor slewing.

SPI and steerpoints are actually 2 different things. SPI overrides steerpoint for weapon systems only. And navigation distance info on hud changes to SPI. Autopilot will always go to steerpoint or manually selected heading if that was selected.