CumulusX!

Hi, I don't get thermals in FSX. I am running CumulusX! and the programm shows that it is connected to FSX. But I don't get any lift. The CumulusX! clouds don't show up either. What's going wrong? Am I missing something? Regards Emi

Recently, I've made a couple of tasks to try out Ian and Wolfgang's new ASH25. I basically took some Open Class tasks from Condor, and recreated them in FSX. Rather than make very long distance tasks, I try, instead, to set lower cloudbase and weaker lift. This means making some custom .CMX files, since the default settings seem rather 'safe'. I confess I've not read enough about all the parameters that CumulusX! controls, and as a result I'm likely making some mistakes. In the .CMX I mainly changed the thermal strength, and the diameter. In some test flights, I was often getting very erratic behaviour, with the vario swinging wildly from sink to lift, never finding an…

Hi all I have chiefly used CumulusX as the vehicle for ridge soaring with simprobe ,but I had noticed that if I had thermals on schematic I could fly through a cuX thermal and not get any lift , but I put this down to the fact that they needed to be set up .But now having been contacted by someone who also count find any lift , I went back to mine to see if I could help .After extensive testing at various sites, times of day and year , heights , winds , all the supplied .cmx files and just playing with the settings , although the autothermal box is green I have flown through any amount of spirals but never once have I hit one iota of lift (or sink) . Here's the …

I had read of Hodge's low cloud problem here: http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=24556 I just made a short task out of Heath Canyon. I am careful when setting weather to only set a single layer of cu at the height I want, so this task weather has a single cu layer 2200-3200m. I'm using CumulusX! with the default configuration, which has thermals from 1500-3000m, but I'm assuming it will use the levels set in the FSX weather. And it did, for the most part. At Heath Canyon and around it, both the FSX and the CumulusX! clouds are all at 2200m, where I want them, but to the south towards the TP at Terminal, I can see some CumulusX! clouds that are lower.…

I had just installed the latest CumulusX and it seems to cast dark shadows on the ground, which appears too sharp and too distinct in outline, rather unnatural. Is there a way to turn off those shadows? Alternatively, is there a way to temporarily deactivate CumulusX when I'm not flying glider? Also, there seems to be only a few thermals here and there. Very few around ridges, where I would expect them. In the real world, how does one find these invicible thermals?

Hi folks, not being to enthusiastic at this time, I'd like to keep you informed about a first milestone of simulating waves over mountains. Based mainly on this paper of Rottman and Broutman, I succeded in realising a simulation of a wave over a single mountain: The green-brown surface depicts the ground, while the blue plane indicates the lift in 15.000 m. The intensity of the lift is expressed in 1000m/(m/s) displacement. The mountain height is 1500m, the wind 10m/s. The area shown covers 120x160 km^2. This a very first step and only shows, that one can calculate something reasonable. It's still quite a way until it will become possible in real-time (without …

Hi there Was flying in the simulator on a typically nice cumulo cloud morning as depicted by CumulusX/ASE/REX2. The CumulusX simulation will allow cumulo clouds to form into bands or lines of cumulus clouds in certain situations and that phenomonen was particular strong that morning. It got me thinking.... I was flying the glider parallel along a distinct band of cumulo that had formed a line allowing me to make some decent progress in distance at no cost. The glider's altitude was greater than the cloud base flying adjacent to the clouds themselves. Fly too close and you hit the turbulent sink. Fly into the cloud line and you get turbulence and cannot see left from r…

Team, I have installed Cusulus X twice and have found out when it is activated, I spawn into a mountain/ground, regardless of where I choose to enter MFS X at. I am able to resume normal loading of MSF X after I disable Cumulus X. I have installed the Cumulus X program into my main MFS X folder. I also have REX Weather installed, but so far I have not read where this should be an issue. Any ideas? Also, is soaring possible without Cumulus X? I am running Windows 7, 64 bit with MS Flight X installed Thanks! DB (USAF_CC)

Hello, I have been reading the manual for CumulusX! and I am a bit confused, Is the slope or ridge lift gemerated automatically, or does it require the loading of css files? Do I just select wind at the face of a mountain and go flying to achive slope lift or is there other settings that need to be set before slope lift will be generated? Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Rockitglider

Hi there Thanks Peter and team for CumulusX1.8 (and WinchX) this year! It completely blew me away as an experience of simulation gliding in FSX! It has provided such an opportunity to experience something of what it must be like to fly gliders in the dynamic skies! There is so much subtlety in the simulation and so much still to both learn and to have fun with.... Sincere best wishes to you Peter and team into the future and enjoy the Christmas break! Thank you for being so generous to share your talent, experience and your time this year for such a small voluntary donation outlay. It is a very special experience you have given to us. Three Cheers! Harry

Hi Peter et al. Peter, this is not your problem or your fault so I aologise for asking the question, but... FPS limiter is a freeware external frame rate limiter utility for DX9 only, a kind of 'renderer hook' that it is possible to run and that limits frame rates to a preset value, without resort to the FSX rate limiter. Tweaking experts (eg. 'Bojote' at Avsim) suggest that this is preferable to the internal limiter and certainly makes for a very smooth display. Trouble is, it kills lift from CumulusX, and I wonder if you might have an insight about that. I can't think why you should as FPS limiter was written for another game altogether, a couple of years ago b…

Although this topic is kinda pointless unless you have installed CumulusX with a real world weather engine like ASE or REX2, I would be interested to see what people have achieved in CumulusX with regards to their flights in CumulusX and also what might be possible. Here are my best: Height: 10,200 feet (tell me I can get to higher altitudes without cheating. I realise I will pass out from lack of oxygen ) Duration: 7 simulation hours 10.30am-5.30pm (c'mon a 6am start and sunset finish must be possible) Distance: 350km (this has to be bettered by someone please) Speed: 50km/hr (slow but I am not very good at thermalling and need to spend a lot of time stationary …

I looked at the old thread on Active Sky and CumulusX! but I think maybe it needs updating for 1.8? When using Active Sky (enhanced), I have options in that program set to not generate thermals or ridge lift. But in reading CumulusX! document, it seems like sometimes station weather is used and sometimes global weather, and I wonder how that is impacted by programs like like Active Sky. Also, Active Sky has an option called "direct wind control" which seems to set global weather and disables station weather. Is there some way to determine the weather that cumulusX! is responding to (maybe in the debug log?) that can be compared to what Active Sky "thinks" the weathe…

Hi there Unfortunately I am completely ignorant on real world soaring I enjoy the effect of soaring in my mind within the simulation, but at times it is good and healthy to compare what we do in the simulator with the real world. Already we have some real world pilots using CumulusX! 1.8. For example B21 has already given some idea of what it is like to be behind a tow plane at 75 knots as the glider begins to lift off! I use real world weather data in the simulator. Sometimes a situation occurs where the cumulus cloud bases are no more than 1500 feet. What I do in the simulator is to enter beneath the cloud at say 1200 feet and screw up right into the cloud its…

Just watched a wonderful clip on ridge soaring at Logan, Utah. Does anyone knows of a good, and long, nice ridge to soar along in FSX? For the one at Logan, where is a good starting point? Lep

Hi all I have FSX with SP1 and SP2 running on a Windows 7 64 bit System. On XP and Vista, Net 2.0 Runtime is required. Net 2.0 cannot be installed with Windows 7 64 bit operating system. Question Is it possible to install Cumulus X (Version 1.8.) on my system without Net 2.0 Runtime or will there be any conflicts or problems ? Thanks a lot for your tips and infos Kurt

Hi - I've just found the forum and am trying to download CumulusX. Every download seems to stop at the same place. Does anyone know if there is an issue with the downloads at the moment?<br /><br />Thanks

Hi all I have a problem with CumulusX! I hope this isn't brought up somewhere on this forum if it did I apologize my problem is that when I start FSX CumulusX starts perfectly automatic but I can't get it connected to FSX. everytime when I click on connect nothing happens... I don't understand it looks like FSX doesn't even notice that CumulusX! is running because I don't see anything in the add on toolbar during flight the same goes for WinchX! by the way but that a side. I hope that anyone can help me here because I'm really excited to use it. thanks in advance Regards, yonieter (p.s. sorry for my English)

best regards, Peter

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 impos…

hi, i've bought the Discus X after im began the training for my real world glider pilot license. after collecting a few hours on an ASK 21 i descided to buy the Discus X because i know that the DG808 which was programmed by MS is s**t! so, after i've bought the Discus X i wannted to fly, but i never came higher then the winch pulled me... so i've installed Cumulus X! but now when i take off, or better said when i make my aircrafts (yes, aircraftS: this is for every plane i have) become so much lift, that they are getting altitude so fast as when i use the fsx fuction to move the aircraft (you know, the one with is activated with "y" if you don't change anything... I'm …

Hi there I am more talk than action. I apologize for this fault in my personality CumulusX is so good that honestly, there should be whole communities of virtual sailplane pilots happening. Perhaps it is, but I am not seeing it. I think we need more software tools perhaps.......I do not want to disturb the absolutely stable and almost perfect CumulusX DLL, and so I suggest an alternative software idea for networking CumulusX pilots together. Someone writes a CumulusX tray icon application where registered users of CumulusX can see on a global map, where other pilots want to fly and at what GMT time (point on the map see the attached graphic). It is from the points on…

Hi Peter, I've been using the registered Cx for over a week now and am totally awed by the great piece of work. However, I noticed the slipstream turbulence that's turned on in registered copy seems to be rather strongly simulated. I'm comparing this to what I observed in video clips I see, where gliders seemingly fly over mountain/ridge terrains without much of any turbulence in evidence. Mostly I have wind set to about 16 knots. Hope you could share on this issue. Thanks. Lep

Have been putting in some good hours soaring in mountain areas such as Austria, etc, and am getting nice experience out of gliding. This is a new and exciting encounter after so many years of flying powered add-ons. One issue I need help in, however. When gliding with no wind in mountain regions with Cu clouds, I encounter strong downdrafts (sinking by 1,000 ft or so) whenever I'm in between mountains, even though there is a massive Cu cloud overhead. Why is this so? Wind has been set to zero, so there shouldn't be any lee-side sink, right? In the real world, how does one safely cross mountain areas, with or without wind? I've seen youtube of gliders flying very …

I have the latest CX and would like to know how may I set weather to have more cumulus clouds. I tried varying FSX's weather setting to produce more clouds but it doesn't seem to change anything (I've disabled FSX file as recommended by CX). And when I tried turning on the default CX's thermal script, it shows up as red color, meaning it's not activated and is using auto thermal instead. How can I use script so that I can specify the amount of clouds, etc.? Lep