Kimosabe,
From what you described, it sounds like you are running out of video memory or something on the performance end. Also, it sounds to me that you have not properly tried to scale down your settings to improve performance,
beginning with setting the environment map slider to none.Try these settings for comparison (as recommended by staff a number of patches ago):
- Graphic details use default settings button
- Move environment map slider to none
- Disable clutter in flight* (was not a staff recommendation but has good benefits), found on second left side page
- Check "Disable Lighting Effects" found on second left side page
Fly around for about 10 minutes and report if anomalies still exist. The controller lockup was a persistent problem that I have not experienced in the last 2 or 3 patches, but was very prevalent before that, and as you described it occurred with heavy handed maneuvers.
The piper you described, sounds to me like the auto target mode unless you are flying with a mouse.
If it is mouse control that is giving you problems, I had this worked out by changing the mouse sensitivity (but it has been a long time to be accurate in my description on how.... try playing with lowering sensitivity and/ or raising sensitivity until you feel the control is most fluid and less jerky).