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Yah, but it doesn't help in flight - when you really need the mosquitos off during the flight... arms aren't long enough...

Besides, in some thermals the darn Swallows don't obey the rules and join the thermal in the opposite direction to the gliders already in it. Tape is simply no good for a Swallow spatter... not that it happens very often at all, but it has done - and a swallow sized "ding" on the leading edge is rather noisy and rather messy.

:wink:

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  • Aerosoft
Yah, but it doesn't help in flight - when you really need the mosquitos off during the flight... arms aren't long enough...

Besides, in some thermals the darn Swallows don't obey the rules and join the thermal in the opposite direction to the gliders already in it. Tape is simply no good for a Swallow spatter... not that it happens very often at all, but it has done - and a swallow sized "ding" on the leading edge is rather noisy and rather messy.

:wink:

We looked hard at getting one of those "leading edge wipers" done, but it's a real tricky animation, certainly on a flexing object.

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You will never hit a healthy swallow. The are the better flyers.

Swallows are in the thermals to hunt the mosquitos.

Never seen a damage on a glider came from a swallow, and i saw hitting one in final by a friend. They are too light.

Not sure, if we can do this animation with winglex, but I am trying.

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The funny thing is, the glider that I know got hit by a Swallow was... a Schwalbe (Swallow) - Kingsfield, Cyprus, around April 76. I was up in the Barge that day though. But there seemed to be thousonds of Swallows in the sky that day and they were all going the opposite way. Actually quite fascinating.

Could have been Swifts I supose :lol:

And winch launching can be dangerous on a hot day. We had radio control in operation because of the heat haze in the middle of the strip - you couldn't see the launch flag waving from the winch. No one saw the poor donkey.

Another danger when thermalling is parachutists. Our local para club at Kingsfield decided to drop off on the way home from Akrotiri - they had done a display or something. Silly beggars jumped without notification and we had four or five gliders in orbit below the Beaver as they hopped out. All opened their chutes under our gliders. We heard the jumpers curse on the way past. Apparently the pilot had said "Yeah, it's all clear below" - from about 12000 feet and you can't see gliders?

Our CFI was a small man - about 1 metre 60 in high heels. But he was a LOT bigger when he got hold of that Beaver Pilot...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi there!

First of all: The Discus looks totally great! I'm already looking forward that it will be avialable.

But I have a general question about gliding in FSX... I have in reality around 600 hours in my logbook, many cross country flights, some competitions, acrobatic flying, etc... So I'm so free to say that I know something about gliding and sailplanes.

But I haven't been able to get ONE single lift in FSX. Up to now thermals looks there so realistic as a not compensated vario in a DG 800...

Is there a setting for thermals or something? Or do I do something wrong? I would wonder...

Kai

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Hi there!

First of all: The Discus looks totally great! I'm already looking forward that it will be avialable.

But I have a general question about gliding in FSX... I have in reality around 600 hours in my logbook, many cross country flights, some competitions, acrobatic flying, etc... So I'm so free to say that I know something about gliding and sailplanes.

But I haven't been able to get ONE single lift in FSX. Up to now thermals looks there so realistic as a not compensated vario in a DG 800...

Is there a setting for thermals or something? Or do I do something wrong? I would wonder...

Kai

ASX Modles Ridge Lift and Waves (Appearntly.) I have yet to try it out but...

I don't think there is a way to change the thermals, but I can actually deal with them pretty nicely. Now Im not to sure how they act in real life, but from my expirence (4 hours backseat) it is actually not THAT bad.

AWF

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Try the alpine soaring mission first, or the Swedish race.

Then try setting "Thermal representation" in the weather tab to graphic.

"Natural" has birds circling, but these are hard to spot from a long way off.

Normal FSX gliding lift is of the thermal kind, but there is something in the SDK about creating gliding weather for D_i_Y missions - if I remember right.

...and of course, thermals are seasonal in FSX, I don't think the thermals generator works in winter.

But FSX does generate thermal activity by default - you just have to find 'em...

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Does FSX place thermals when using an external weather engine like ActiveSky? I tried it once and had the feeling that it doesn't work?

But thanks for the hint with the birds always wondered what that option would make because I never found the thermals :P

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From my feeling the thermal/lift models seem very rudimentary in FSX (as compared to a soaring sim like condor or silent wings - what else would you expect as these are specialized on soaring). From what I tried it seems standard termals are depending on daytime (and maybe season), but not so much on weather conditions. I had the impression that termals are always located in the same places and not related with cumulus clouds. However, I often got lift flying by beside or above cumulus clouds (which is kind of strange). There are some freeware tools for creating termals that were made for FS9. One allows you to place thermals at fixed positions in the scenery (I guess, this is used for creating addon soaring sceneries, you can download from the freeware platforms). One tool randomly places thermals in fs9 (not sure if it works in fsx) and gives you distance and direction to the next thermal when you press a key.

You can find some of these tools here:

http://www.fsglider.de/

Personally, I am using the sailplane in FSX, when I want to have a nice scenic flight, as the graphics are nicer in FSX than in the soaring sims. When I really want to soar, I am using condor (or sometimes silent wings), as these are as close as you can get to the real thing with regards to lift and flight model.

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ASX Modles Ridge Lift and Waves (Appearntly.) I have yet to try it out but...

I don't think there is a way to change the thermals, but I can actually deal with them pretty nicely. Now Im not to sure how they act in real life, but from my expirence (4 hours backseat) it is actually not THAT bad.

AWF

ASX... Is this an addon on for FSX ? if so can you elaborate on where to find it? Ridge lift for FSX would definitely be a boon.

I'm hoping when Aerosoft release the discus they will add some enhancment to the thermals around Dillingham scenery to. Anyone know if there is a European Glider field scenery available for FSX? Dillingham is great but it would be nice to have one in this part of the world.

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@Manuel: Thank you for the hints and the nice link!

@MDIvey: Yeah... an european glider scenery or two or three *g* would be great. But I plan to use the German Airfields for that.

Concerning ASX. Try this link: http://www.hifisim.com/asx.php

But I am not sure how it advances the soaring experience. Many options you can change but didn't try so far.

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Hi. New member here. I came because I started flying gliders in FSX due to Aerosoft DillinghamX and then found out they are working on a nice glider.

From what I've learned, soaring in FSX is on this basis:

There are what amount to autogen thermals generated based on the landclass defined in the file "ThermalDescriptions.xml.

As stated, the "birds" in the thermals are hard to see. There is a replacement, which creates a cumulus cloud over the thermal (not as good as the clouds in, say, ASX, but better than having to turn on green spirals).

In addition to these thermals, there are scenery thermals and ridge lift. these have to be defined in scenery xml files and compiled in BGLComp (see BGLComp SDK for info on these ). These are locked to geographic position, so aren't that useful for generating lift over large areas.

Next, there is Simconnect thermals. These can be injected by weather programs such as ASX (I've read that ASX does this, but no explanation on just how they are created). Unfortunately, there is no direct way to inject ridge lift. See the SimConnect SDK.

Next, there are missions. Missions can create both thermals and ridge lift, such as in the default soaring missions. See the mission creation SDK. You need to look at all these SDKs to get the full picture.

fortunately, there is work underway to get around all this. It is a program in work called CumulusX! It currently requires sp2 to be installed (it works only with sp2 Simconnect.dll). CumulusX! is designed to work based on weather and terrain slope. The program requires the slope to be precompiled, but there is a utility to do this. There is also an extension in work that would sample the terrain in-game and generate ridge lift "on the fly".

CumulusX! and slope compiler:

http://www.luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/

sim-probe is here:

http://carrier.csi.cam.ac.uk/forsterlewis/.../dev/sim_probe/

scott s.

.

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This looks to have very good potential... thanks for letting us know about it. I should like to see this used to add some ridge lift to those hills at the back of Dillingham :)

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Very interesting Links and Tools! Thank you for that.. even if I have to read some more to understand correctly what the tools do. But I think this will enhance the Glider project here even more if get a better glider environemt in FSX! Thanks a lot!

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It is a program in work called CumulusX! It currently requires sp2 to be installed (it works only with sp2 Simconnect.dll). CumulusX! is designed to work based on weather and terrain slope. The program requires the slope to be precompiled, but there is a utility to do this. There is also an extension in work that would sample the terrain in-game and generate ridge lift "on the fly".

CumulusX! and slope compiler:

http://www.luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/

sim-probe is here:

http://carrier.csi.cam.ac.uk/forsterlewis/.../dev/sim_probe/

scott s.

.

Hey Scott, welcome here, thanks for a nice post! About SP2, you can be almost 100% sure we will deliver the glider for SP2 because that's the version that will be in FSX boxes very soon if our information is correct.

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