Adjusting weather in FSX for soaring?

[rlink 0]

I was just wondering. Does setting all of the weather parameters manually in FSX have any effect on thermal generation? I mean, is there a specific group of settings for wind, clouds, temperature, barometric pressure, etc that would give you more thermal activity than just using the default "Fair Weather" theme? I have fiddled around with different weather parameters manually, but so far I don't see any better thermal activity than if I use the default "Fair Weather" theme.

The reason I ask is because I have a favorite airport that I like to tow out of. But when I use the "Fair Weather" theme, the thermals in this area are very few, and VERY far between. And so far no matter how I tweak the weather manually, it doesn't seem to get much better. Does anyone have a set of weather parameters that works well for thermal generation? Or are we just stuck with whatever thermal activity that the program wants to give us regardless of how we manually set the weather?

Randy L.

"A good landing is one in which

you can use the aircraft afterwards."

[sf4JC 1]

Very good question! But I haven't fiddled with manually setting the weather quite yet, I basically use the real-world weather as much as I can because I don't know the details of setting up realistic weather throughout the atmosphere. I've noticed sometimes that a particular thermal is not indicated in the area that it would normally be, but I haven't checked to see if it is still there or not.

Hope someone can give an answer to your question.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

I saw, that choosing "Clear Sky" weather theme stops thermals entirely. I don't know if there are other conditions, which turn off thermals. Aside from that my current experience is, that if there are any thermals, they are always at the same place and with the same strength, and, very boring, all over the day. In FSX the sky is full of gas stations for gliders. Sometimes, there are thermals popping up, but it seems more a matter of scenery range rather than creating dynamic thermals.

If there are thermals at all in a region is defined in the file thermaldescriptions.xml. It is rather self explanatory. Sections are organised as landclasses. Those which are pointing to the ID 4f5e0000-1e81-11db-9897-001372201444 don't have any thermals. The other IDs refer to certain definitions, surpsingly independent from all weather conditions, such as dew-point, existing cloud layer, lability etc.. Possibly your area is in one of the handicapped landclasses. You may find out which landclass is around your location and modify the ID to some more appreciable thermal conditons. You can have probably thermals over the north pole by editing this file.

Aside from that I believe that the distribution is hardcoded in the weather engine and related to the landclasses. There you would have to wait, until some add-on comes, say CumulusX! :winks: comes with a more handy and realistic implementation.

regards,

Peter

[normblitch 0]

Peter,

Do the "AI" thermals have matching "sink"?? :confused2:

Norm

I saw, that choosing "Clear Sky" weather theme stops thermals entirely. I don't know if there are other conditions, which turn off thermals. Aside from that my current experience is, that if there are any thermals, they are always at the same place and with the same strength, and, very boring, all over the day. In FSX the sky is full of gas stations for gliders. Sometimes, there are thermals popping up, but it seems more a matter of scenery range rather than creating dynamic thermals.

If there are thermals at all in a region is defined in the file thermaldescriptions.xml. It is rather self explanatory. Sections are organised as landclasses. Those which are pointing to the ID 4f5e0000-1e81-11db-9897-001372201444 don't have any thermals. The other IDs refer to certain definitions, surpsingly independent from all weather conditions, such as dew-point, existing cloud layer, lability etc.. Possibly your area is in one of the handicapped landclasses. You may find out which landclass is around your location and modify the ID to some more appreciable thermal conditons. You can have probably thermals over the north pole by editing this file.

Aside from that I believe that the distribution is hardcoded in the weather engine and related to the landclasses. There you would have to wait, until some add-on comes, say CumulusX! :winks: comes with a more handy and realistic implementation.

regards,

Peter

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Do the "AI" thermals have matching "sink"?? :confused2:

AI thermals have a concentric cylindrical design, which means a core zone with lift surrounded by a sleave of sink. At the boundaries and in the zones there may or may not be turbulence effects.

There isn't anything like wide spread sink or sink fields by default. It is possible, however, to create "thermals" with the mission builder or by a Simconnect client, that have "negative" lift. Nevertheless, the concentric design remains, though all paremeters (diameter, fraction of lift, width of boundaries, lift, turbulence) can be defined independently.

The mission builder (and only this, a Sinmconnect client can't) can also create so-called slope lift. However, the slope-element concept is totally screwed up, so it is practically impossible, to to anything reasonable with it (search for posts of me at fsxmission.com).

Basically I believe the mission system is way too complicated, to create good missions efficiently. Indeed, after an initial hype, the number of new missions is totally down.

Regards,

Peter