My (young) children are using the smart steering and auto acceleration in MK8D so they can get comfortable participating with less frustration, etc.
But they're curious about what it's doing when. (Okay, they're curious about everything. Why DO we wear ties?) Plus, since the goal is eventually to help them learn to control the Karts unassisted, it's important to be able to explain what it does, so they can differentiate what they're learning about how their actions affect the Kart, separate from when the aids are affecting it.
What are the key guiding rules or principles that define how each of these things work?
I'm not looking for degrees of rotation or sensitivity settings here, more along the lines of:
"Auto steering kicks in when you touch the edge of the road, then
steers you back to the center, then de-activates again."
But I just made that particular one up.
Best Answer
Based on this article written about these two features, it looks like this is how they work:
From this, it looks like the game accelerates for you so you don't have to hold down the acceleration button the entire time. However, it prevents you from not accelerating, which is useful strategically.
The smart-steering feature seems to work like this:
This prevents you from going off-road, but it also appears to prevent the player from going on shortcuts.