Maybe it’s the one Glider I’ve tried to fly so far; there just seems to be two major issues.
The aerotow thinks it’s Top Gun Maverick and bobs and weaves through invisible gates and pylons thinking it’s a fighter jet. This isn’t a relative problem - I’ve mapped out the Aerotow’s course and it’s the same everywhere it goes. At sea level it’s manageable and over flatter surfaces it’s manageable. But over any kind of terrain it’s unmanageable. At one airport the aerotow was bobbing and weaving through local buildings and streets PROBABLY because it has a predefined course at sea level and at higher elevation it has programmed anti-collision.
There’s no thermals. I’ve looked and I’ve used game mechanics to build them. They are so far and few between I don’t know how anyone stays in the air. Honestly. I spent 12 hours yesterday game-mechanicking the heck out of MSFS and could NOT get any meaningful thermals to develop.
So what about thermals?
I’m pretty sure they disappear the closer I get to them. What this tells me is there’s some dynamic computing based on your location and that it’s flawed; erasing thermals that should be there and that’s the whole reason I was flying there to begin with. But by the time I get there …POOF… At first I thought it was altitude dependent which was a game design to allow a player to more easily land. But no, it seems to persist at any altitude.
It’s too consistent to be some kind of “transitory” situation and conveniently thermals never appear randomly around me; they only seem to consistently DISAPPEAR around me.
I’m aware that thermals are supposed to be tied to clouds and ridges. But I literally take off in the mountains and the ridge thermals evaporate before my very eyes.
I create thunder cells and there’s nice curtains of thermals…MIRAGES.
I hate to say it. But the Darkstar is more flyable than gliders.
Hm. I just started flying gliders (the LS8 so far). I did two flights with live weather in south Germany. At least on the flight on sunday it fealt similar to what you describe. To me it felt as if the thermals jumped quite a lot. But there were a lot of strong thermals so I managed to complete the planned distance. But in the end I mostly just flew straight thrugh the thermals ,as circling wasn’t efficient on that day.
My RL gliding days are long gone and I did only one flight climbing in a thermal, but that one was consistant and it was easy to climb for me as a beginner.
So I also hope for some improvement, but it’s currently good enough for me to have fun gliding…
Thanks for the reply Marvin, helps me know I’m not crazy. From my engineering perspective I’m something like 95% confident that in SU12 the thermals are “miraging” and that the reason would have to do with how the seed for the spawn is calculated based on the position of the user.
Under good normal glider conditions I’ve been able to decently follow the tow even though I think the tow is a terrible pilot, per my friend the Cessna pilot.
And he flies out of some of the craziest mountain ranges in the world so … if he thinks the tow is ■■■■ it’s ■■■■ lol.
When there are strong thermals in the game the circling works and I’ve tested that.
But when they aren’t strong enough it seems that there’s too much slippage in a banked turn to compensate and you still sink. I don’t think it’s due to built-in sink atmospherics.
It simply seems that the regular stock gliders don’t actually have enough lift to turn into a thermal without the thermal being unusually strong. This is for Su12.
The fact it’s probably a problem with Su12 is reinforced by the fact that the older tutorials which have clear and obvious strong thermals works so easily that it made me feel like a child compared to what I’m dealing with in the live-game.
So I think gliders are flyable. I fly it almost every day for at least 1-2 hours or more. If I have not committed myself to a special airfield that is too short for aerotow, where I then use the winch, the take-off with aerotow usually works well, apart from the problems I wrote about in the post “Do AI pilots need education”. In fact, I find thermals in FS to be the worst thing about gliding. It has only very basic things to do with real thermals. But once you get the hang of it, you get on well with it. Winds in the mountains, on the other hand, work quite well. But in general, the weather in the FS is not yet as it should be. It is most noticeable when gliding in the flatlands. In general, as in reality, flying in the mountains is more varied and it works quite well there and there is much more to see. In the Discus, for example, there is a graphical aid for thermal circling in the display that shows a track when climbing and decending. This makes it easy to centre the circling. If you fly the LS8, you can only do this visually by trying to fix a point on the ground to the side. Since I only fly with VR glasses, looking around in the plane is no problem. The big disadvantage: you can’t feel anything. Therefore, you have to check the tilt of the transverse axis when looking sideways over the wing, or check an increase and decrease in speed via the wind noise, or just look at the airspeed indicator. Flying without VR therefore becomes even more difficult. The thing about gliding is to keep in touch with the outside world, because without a motor you are dependent on it.
I used to fly without VR. Since I got VR glasses, I can’t imagine flying without them. But not everyone can afford such a thing or is a friend of it. Then it is important to have good view settings, which the FS2020 also has more than enough with this version.
So it stays the same: gliding is a challenge in real life as well as in the simulator, but the prerequisites in FS still need to be improved a lot to be like real life.
So again, at least for me:
Is it flyable: yes
Is it fun: YES at least for me, it’s a lot of fun.
Happy flights.
Ralf
How do I change to the wench and also why is it my mountain thermals seem to suck and I get to them and they literally just vanish?
Are you doing anything differently in settings? Live-weather? Mods? I’ve done all the basics such as time of day and a few other tweaks and just can’t get the thermals to persist. They vanish by the time I get to them.
Once you’ve selected the glider, go to the second menu from the bottom on the left. start method.
I’ll try to load a weather preset here that I once created if the weather doesn’t suit where I want to fly. I haven’t needed it for a long time and have to check first whether it hasn’t changed with the updates.
Thanks I did google it but I have a habit of conversing rather than googling.
I’d much rather get it the way you do - the “live-weather” way. It’s more of a challenge. I think the biggest hindrance is the tow. In areas I want to fly the tow flies like a maniac. That’s a fact. Flying between buildings and down river valleys and such is just bad AGL mapping - the tow flies a preset path then navigates the “overlay”. Test it - you’ll see what I mean.
The visible thermals being unreliable is news to me but explains a lot.
By the way Roter, is there a glider you find has better flight model than others? I saw a post that the stock gliders aren’t as good as developed ones on flightsim.to ? But which of those may be better if any?
OK, then try with live weather. Can you give the Name of the Airport an Direction to start. Then I wil have a try.
I think all gliders have their challenges. If you don’t want to go on the distance, I like to fly the K7. Mostly the LS8 But the DG is certainly very good too. I don’t like the jet propulsion. But you don’t have to use it. The Discus FES when the weather is not so good and I don’t know the route. The Neo is not working properly. I actually have all there is. Mostly probably the FES and the LS8
They are absolutely flyable. Thermals are… well… weird but hill soarin works great. I love the Gotfriends Discus 2 and the K-7 from .to, the sim default gliders are not really that great. Oh and use the winch… It’s totally sufficient to get into the air. You need 300m and you’re good.
I often am above 300m and still can’t seem to get the thermals to work. But as noted by Roter; the thermal image doesn’t really line up well so I’ll have to try harder with what I know should work rather than with following those lines.
I’m very fed up with the Tow as well. Wench it is!
I meant all you need is 300 meter of release height and you’re fine if you’re close to a hill. Thermals aren’t really working. I haven’t tried that kinetic assistant though as mentioned above.
So when I wrote that the thermals are not real, it does not mean that there are none and they do not work. The best way to test this is to create your own weather. It’s just that it’s not as complex as real weather, so it’s easier to check what the thermals are doing.
In a specially created setting, thermals can spread better in the FS because they are not disturbed by too many other parameters. This does not make the location and the environment more assessable, but to put it shortly, they do exist, and you can fly pretty well. Mostly they are under Clouds, but also at Places of no clouds.
Setting for thermals in the FS:
Which is fundamentally wrong, there are no thermals without wind. I’m not going to explain anything here, but in my experience so far, if you set the wind to zero, nothing happens. So you choose a wind direction and set it to 1-2m/s on the ground and make sure that the Layer is set to the white line which means Ground altitude. If you want it to be a little bumpy, adjust gusts in the same direction, but only 0.5-1m/s. Set the number to approx 4-10/minute.
You only need one cloud layer. Put the two above straight in space of zero thicknes and use the lowest one. If necessary, you can set it at the lower limit at any altitude. The upper limit should then be a few kilometres above, depending on the desired thermal strength. E.g. lower limit 2500m, upper 5000m. Or lower limit 3500m, upper limit 8000m.
The clouds should have a good density so that they appear visibly dark from below, not to much. Adjust the percentage so that the clouds are well spaced and have not to small surface from below.
Unfortunately, the clouds position never arrange themselves into so-called cloud streets. But no matter.
The temperature and the position of the sun also have a great influence. The strength of the thermals over the day is quite realistic, although there is no reversal of the systems, e.g. on the coast or in the mountains. So choose a good summer month when the sun is at its highest and a time of day around 1-3pm. Set the temperature to summer values, e.g. 24-28 degrees Celsius. The air pressure 1010-1020hPa. The humidity to 2. The temperature settings can only be selected by pressing the X at the top right after the cloud or wind layers have been displayed. The layers are not deleted by this.
Do not forget to save the settings, otherwise they will be gone again after a restart.
It takes some fingertip feeling, so don’t go to extremes right away. Experiment a little and save different settings that you can switch between. If you want to use slope winds at the same time, set the wind direction across the slope in the mountains, depending on where you want to fly from. But don’t push the wind too far, because it pushes the thermals to the side, which makes centring difficult. The stronger the wind, the easier it is to fly on the slope, the harder it is to centre in the thermal. This is also the same in real flight.
Happy Gliding
Regards Ralf
