Unable to ping when "auto-control-plane" is set to false in p4app.json

We are experimenting with multiswitch.p4app.

When we set this "auto-control-plane" in p4app.json to false, we are unable to ping host to host.
Even the CLI table_add, table_set command logs do not appear at runtime in the console.

Can someone please let us know what `auto-control-plane` setting  is and when to set it to true/false?

Thanks