Oh my God. this is terrible! This new way of driving with that little white ball was a bad idea. it's impossible to drive and worst of all, it takes away the immersion of the game, please remove it, or, give us a way to disable it. excuse my sincerity.thank you.
Pilot mode can already be deactivated. You probably accidentally turned it on. Either turn it off from the main page of the control panel (there is a switch) or use the hotkey (not listed in the controls). The hotkey, if you haven't rebound your keys, is LShift+I It is 'Shift modifier'+'auto brake' keybinds if you have rebound them. If you were trying to use shift to boost, and turn on/off your auto brake at the same time, that is how you accidentally turn it on.
I looked in the main menu and there is no option: autopilot, but I managed to disable it with LSHIFT+B, thanks friend. I will delete this post.
Don't delete the post... you may feel dumb but we all make mistakes, others could benefit from the resolution here!
It's mostly useful for conducting larger/heavier/slower ships smoothly. It's also handy for making vector changes more gradually without losing overall speed. Since I bound autobrake to a mouse thumb button, I'm able to toggle pilot mode without reaching for the I key. I highly recommend this rebind.
Main menu of the ships control panel and not main menu of the game. Press P when looking at the ship to open the control panel. Go to the main tab and there is a switch called Pilot Mode. No need to delete as other people may run into the same issue and it could help them.
Autobrake. Everyone makes that mistake, took me weeks to figure out. Now it's just natural, always good to remember these 'tings you learned.