I’m looking for tips on how to find places to soar using real weather. I’m loving the new thermals and gliding, but I’m finding it’s not easy to find the right conditions. For me, it’s just trial & error right now.
Toolbar - Weather - down at the bottom there is a visualisation slider
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No, I understand how to visualize them. What I’m trying to understand is how to find the right time & place in the world that actually has thermals when using live weather. I’ve flown 3 flights so far, and hardly any thermals are to be seen using the 3D thermal visuals. Been flying all over the Alps trying to find just something to give some lift.
Well my gliding experience is almost 30 years back and I never did a long trip, but I would guess that the thermal season is over in Europe.
I also looked forward to SU11 having gliders implemented, butcas I also prefer to fly with real weather in my local area (also at the Alps) I’ll guess I have to use presets or wait for spring next year…
Oh wow, didn’t realize it was seasonal. Bad timing. I’m having a better run out of Innsbruck right now. Not a lot of lift, but enough to keep you from just steady falling. Guess I’ll have to rely on weather presets. That’s unfortunate.
I’m really not an expert, but thermals rely on sun light and ground structure/type (and I guess a lot of other things). So you have far more strong thermals during summer (and of course if it is not overcast). And I would expect no (or very weak) thermals over large water bodies as water heats up slowly. But I would not expect that to be modelled.
I’m quite curious what experienced real life glider pilots think about the modelling. I guess the release timing is fortunate for them as they can fly (with presets or in other countries) during winter in the sim. 
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Birds circling, big black Cu clouds and head on to over a town. If the modelling is correct, you’ll find thermals.
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There is a free gliding manual handbook released by the FAA, it’s quite large and has nice coloured illustrations. Published in 2013, there are a few parts which are out-of-date especially for UK gliding.
Here is a link to the manual that will explain how to thermal/soar in lift and give you tons of information on how to fly gliders…
This is a large manual and I have included some screen-shots for you to give you a flavour…
Charles.
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The updraft simulation is based on the solar radiation, so it’s best to fly near the equator or set the time to summer and during the day. The simulation creates rising air below clouds depending on the density and size, above dark colors on the satellite imagery and on the side of hills, depending on the slope.
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Thanks. This is a great explanation. I hadn’t considered changing the date. Been flying since release and just forgot that option existed. That’ll probably resolve a lot of issues. Will test it in the morning and see how it compares
A great time to fly in the UK is late March to April. The air can be quite cold especially when coming from a northerly direction at this time of year. As the sun is higher in the sky and there is good ground warming, (especially in April), the thermals can be quite strong with lift averaging around 4kts or sometimes a little stronger, sometimes it can be very easy to find thermals at this time of year. The only problem at this time of year are the so-called April showers. Try some ridge soaring, alas I guess wave soaring is not modelled, I have never seen a lenticular cloud in MSFS2020. I have been up-to 22,500’ in wave while soaring from Aboyne in Scotland in September. It’s cold on the feet! Oxygen is a definite must!
Charles.
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Capt’,
Ridge lift is present throughout the year, wave soaring is better in September in the UK. When using ridge lift, make sure you are on the correct side of the hill or mountain. You need to be on the upwind side of the slope and stay close to the slope. You may have to play with your weather settings to set-up the correct conditions/most favourable conditions for ridge soaring. Check out the late Balaka’s, (Matt) exhilarating costal ridge soaring video. He ended up in the water on one of these flights. Unfortunately he was killed in a avoidable gliding accident. This video should inspire you!
Charles.
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As an experienced glider pilot I think the thermal system in its current state is still quite rubbish. When you preset the weather to some conditions that ought to give proper thermals (high Cumulus cloud base, high temperature, summer around 15:00LT). The thermals are present, but very weirdly spread. Hard to find cores and center them. It is more like there are some strings of air going up than nice disjointed cores that are 3x the cloud base apart. Of course in real life thermals have their own character and some are easier to find and center than others, but these are consistently weird. Moreover, the worst thing is that the clouds are completely detached from the thermals. Cumulus form via convection and are thus great indicators of where to find lift. However not yet in the sim. The clouds are just randomly in between. Lots of room for improvement and I will make a more worked out post after some more testing. Nevertheless the flight model is pretty good and same can be said for the launch methods. Ridgelift in the sim is also more representative of reality than the current thermal system. A good first iteration of gliding with lots of potential. But to the OP: don’t be fooled by the difficulty of finding thermals. The strategy you would apply in real life doesn’t work yet in the sim.
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I just had a go from Worcester gliding airfield near Cape Town, South Africa - close to my house, so I tried it, but my real life gliding experience is limited to just one flight. I used to play Condor as well.
After an aerotow, I picked a dark field which I thought would work IRL, and it worked in the sim as well (edit to add: urban areas seemed good too) - live weather was on, and it’s nice sunny summers day down here in Cape Town, so it made for decent thermal activity. The ‘visualisation’ part doesn’t work at all for this kind of thermal activity it seems, I have a button bound to it which was working yesterday, but nothing showed up even though I was getting plenty of lift. It seems a bit harder to localise the core of the thermal compared to Condor, but the flight model feels like my memory of that one flight I did in real life (massive amounts of rudder required compared to normal light aircraft!) It’s a very interesting addition to MSFS, with further refinement it’ll be an amazing addition to the sim world IMHO.
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To increase the chance of thermals make sure you set the time of year to be whatever summer is for you and fly at midday. This works even with live weather. I messed around today you need some wind as well to increase the strength of thermals. Nil wind seems to reduce thermal strength.
Temperature and cloud base do seem to make a difference to the height of the thermals. I just flew in the discus 2c for around 90 mins. In the first hour (July midday) the thermals where strong. Some higher than cloud base. After 45mins it kind of settled out and the thermals stopped more or less at cloud base inspite of me constantly trying to climb further (yellow bit had me try several times to climb above cloud base).
The thermals are far from perfect and sometimes so tight they are unworkable. But it’s good fun.
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Windy.com also has a thermals layer in beta (will only be available to premium subscribers once it leaves beta);
Generally Midwest USA, Mexico and West South America seem to have a lot of thermal activity in this time of year.
Thermals are located under the thick, dark clouds in medium coverage and high pressure, high temperature weather. See here for my results in experimenting with thermals:
Hi RL glider pilot here, and long SU11Beta thermals tester -
Well meteoblue website itself has some aviation layers:
Also check Soaring Flight Distance and Soaring Index layers
If the thermal model was good - that is thermals would be connected to the Cu cloud bottoms you could also find good enough weather by searching for Cu clouds like this on satellite photos:
It would be also great if Asobo simply add a “soaring index” layer to it’s own built in MSFS world map - Filters → Weather Layer
But the most dramatic thing is that current thermal model is a great misrepresentation of RL thermals - more info and other RL glider pilots feedback about it is here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/6-improved-atmospheric-simulation-with-a-big-focus-on-thermals-and-general-tweaks-for-the-cfd/550009
There was a short statement from devs in twitch stream about gliders that thermals will be improved, but it is best to upvote thermal realism wishlist item to make sure they have motivation to actually do it.
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As a RL glider pilot and after a lot of testing I can say with confidence that in SU11 pilot cannot use Cu clouds as visual cues to find thermals (which is the most common method in RL) I filed a bug report listing all spatial cases - Incorrect spatial relations between thermals and Cu clouds makes realisic glider flights impossible plase support this report to have realistic cross country flights in gliders possible.
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Cape Town! Why didn’t I think of that? Thanks for the suggestion