Being a huge soaring enjoyer, I have looked forward to 40th anniversary for months. The current thermals situation, as we can read in the forum, isn’t optimal. I have still tried to play around with it a bit to go out and find the best settings for thermals (not ridge!) soaring in the sim. My findings are as follows:
As for the general weather settings, we want relatively high pressure and temperature - I have found a sweet spot somewhere around 95°f and 30.50 inhg. Humidity I have left around 7, but with an unclear result of changes to this in terms of thermals generation.
In order to completely lose updrafts for my experimentation, I have taken all wind layers out of my thermals soaring weather. You may want to mix in some, in order to enjoy the best of both worlds.
Now onto the clouds, which are the most important for thermals. First off, you are going to want a really high cloud layer. I have set mine to 4000ft - 42000ft for this. Depending on how many overall thermals you want, set the coverage and scatter to appropriate levels. I went with 15 and 85%. As for density: This influences the strength of singular thermals. The higher the better, so I went with full 5.
All these settings will guarantee you good thermal activity below the thick, dark clouds, ranging from (in my experience) 1m/s to 7 m/s thermal activity.
EDIT: Summertime also seems to make a difference due to the higher intensity of the sun cause by the angle of incoming light.
This is interesting… do you have any screenshots of the resulting skies? I’d love to see what these settings create.
I’m just getting into the soaring world and will give these settings a try once I’m better dialed in as a pilot.
Thanks for your settings. I am going to try those.
P.S.: Maybe add the Tag “Glider” to your post, I am searching the forums for the last days for exactly this kind of information (and good glider spots / locations) - but all posts are either related to the modelling of thermals or completely other topics…
Sorry, I didn’t take any. But basically you have got to aim for the dark clouds, below these there’s a lot of updrafts. Between the clouds there are nearly none. It looks like a blue sky with storm type clouds, some are really dark. You can always go down on density, that will make them brighten up, but your thermal activity will go down as well.
Have you tried setting a lower pressure setting though?
High pressure systems normally give more stable conditions, with lower pressures being associated with the more unstable weather we’re after for thermals.
