Blue Thermal Question

[Lep 0]

Have been putting in weeks of flying in teh Aerosoft Discus with registered Cx and truly love it.

There was one flight where I set the weather to Clear Sky and saw that there was to be a Blue Thermal (the Auto Thermals Box was shaded Blue). After winch-launching to 3,000+ feet, I flew around for a long while but there was not one single thermal to be found. (Had set config to have thermals from 500 ft to 8,000 ft).

On another occasion, I had user-set wind to 16 knots, but with NO cloud set. Cx showed Green for Auto Thermals, but again no thermal was observed throughout the flight.

Hope to know how Blue Thermal can be obtained. I like cloud soaring, but they impose a heavy penalty on the frame rate.

EDIT : I set the min lift ceiling to 3,000 ft and now I can catch thermal more easily. However, even then, there didn't seem to be many thermals to be found, even with Thermal Coverage set to 15 max. Is the amount of Blue Thermals also determined by Thermal Coverage setting in the Config?

[Peter Lürkens 30]

There was one flight where I set the weather to Clear Sky and saw that there was to be a Blue Thermal (the Auto Thermals Box was shaded Blue). After winch-launching to 3,000+ feet, I flew around for a long while but there was not one single thermal to be found. (Had set config to have thermals from 500 ft to 8,000 ft).

On another occasion, I had user-set wind to 16 knots, but with NO cloud set. Cx showed Green for Auto Thermals, but again no thermal was observed throughout the flight.

Hope to know how Blue Thermal can be obtained. I like cloud soaring, but they impose a heavy penalty on the frame rate.

EDIT : I set the min lift ceiling to 3,000 ft and now I can catch thermal more easily. However, even then, there didn't seem to be many thermals to be found, even with Thermal Coverage set to 15 max. Is the amount of Blue Thermals also determined by Thermal Coverage setting in the Config?

Hi Lep,

• The blue (or orange) box tells you that you are out of the thermal time windows (blue: it's too late, orange it's too early).
  
• There is a chapter in the manual which explains, when blue thermals are created. Basically, CumulusX! looks at FSX' own cloud coverage. If there are clear skies in FSX, then CumulusX! produces blue thermals.
  
• Regarding FPS, this will be affected by very high numbers of thermals (e.g. 15/100km^2 rather than the default 5). Possibly ATI cards are more sensitive than NVIDIA.
  
• Typically thermal ceilings are in a pretty narrow window at a thermal soaring day. CumulusX! uses FSX' cumulus cloud altitude for it if those exist. Otherwise it picks a value from the defined range on the configuration panel and uses it for a substantial time range for all thermals.
  
• 500 ft is way too low for reasonable soaring, use a minimum of 2000ft AGL. Btw, all CumulusX! settings are metric.
  

best regards,

Peter

[Lep 0]

Hi Lep,

• The blue (or orange) box tells you that you are out of the thermal time windows (blue: it's too late, orange it's too early).
  
• There is a chapter in the manual which explains, when blue thermals are created. Basically, CumulusX! looks at FSX' own cloud coverage. If there are clear skies in FSX, then CumulusX! produces blue thermals.
  
• Regarding FPS, this will be affected by very high numbers of thermals (e.g. 15/100km^2 rather than the default 5). Possibly ATI cards are more sensitive than NVIDIA.
  
• Typically thermal ceilings are in a pretty narrow window at a thermal soaring day. CumulusX! uses FSX' cumulus cloud altitude for it if those exist. Otherwise it picks a value from the defined range on the configuration panel and uses it for a substantial time range for all thermals.
  
• 500 ft is way too low for reasonable soaring, use a minimum of 2000ft AGL. Btw, all CumulusX! settings are metric.
  

best regards,

Peter

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I tried out one flight with a wider range of ceilings with Clear Sky setting and managed to get good thermals, especially over some mountain ranges.

Two questions here I hope you could help further clarify :-

1) Under User-Defined weather setting, if I set a wind but NO cloud layer, can I still get Blue Thermal?

2) When there is Blue Thermal, with no cloud, is the number of these "invincible" thermals also decided by the Thermal Coverage setting in the config?

Thanks.

[Peter Lürkens 30]

1) Under User-Defined weather setting, if I set a wind but NO cloud layer, can I still get Blue Thermal?

2) When there is Blue Thermal, with no cloud, is the number of these "invincible" thermals also decided by the Thermal Coverage setting in the config?

Both answers are yes.

best regards,

Peter

[Lep 0]

Both answers are yes.

best regards,

Peter

Thanks, Peter.

Will get on with practicing catching the thermals. Hope to get a more powerful PC for some real clouds soaring.