sim_probe no longer needed for ridge lift

[B21 19]

Here's the link to Peter's announcement in the SOAR forum hosted by Aerosoft

As a work of total genius , Peter Luerkens has now incorporated ridgelift calculation as a STANDARD element of the freeware CumulusX!, improving upon the prior calculation requiring my add-on module "sim_probe".

The Aerosoft Discus documentation suggests installing both freeware packages (CumulusX! and sim_probe) but as of today you are better off simply installing CumulusX! version 1.5 and omitting sim_probe, for an easier install.

If you don't know, CumulusX has always provided sophisticated thermal modelling (with a shape, lifecycle etc), and now it also provides the dynamic calculation of ridge lift (and sink) present on every slope when there's a wind blowing. This means you can start up a flight say from Mifflin County Airport, Pennsylvania, with the wind at 15 knots from the NW, and enjoy hundreds of miles of soaring along the Appalacian ridges.

Two bits of minor comment: (i) sim_probe also incorporates an IGC-standard logger which is really nothing to do with it's ridgelift capability. I will produce a new version (renamed "logger") which only contains that function, and you can install it if you want logging and not otherwise... (ii) to credit Peter, prior versions of Cx *could* provide ridge lift *if* you did a pre-compile step to analyse the terrain of the flying region and produce a 'slope' file - sim_probe was convenient for users because it didn't need this step, and Peter has adopted that approach and further refined the formulas to convert slope and wind into lift.

[J.Schweigler 203]

I totally agree with you!

Very nice program. But don't forget the wonderful new clouds he made. Almost not to differ from the standard clouds.

Very cool!

Thanks very much, Peter