Good points and great advice, I’ve only used the real weather option so far on days when I knew we had 2-3m/s here but there was barely anything in the sim. I’ll try your suggestion, thanks!
The wind in MSFS is so goofy —ugh—.
Example you can set wind to 60,000 feet above mean ground level and it has little impact on you. You set it to 150knots and it lifts your glider into the air…wind. At 60,000 feet…affects you that much on the ground?
You can put wind below ground too and it blows you around.
At 50kts, wind at 60,000 feet AGL will make white topped waves.
It’s just so goofy.
I was confused by these temperatures, aren’t these temperatures absolute and should never be changed because it’s how altitude is calculated? So by changing these figures you’re artificially changing elevation?
Also I took to adding Kinetic Assist. Very helpful. It actually imports real thermals into the game so that there are SOME realistic thermal locations if the game isn’t providing some.
Try Sim Soaring Club on discord , you will find out what really wrong with the MSFS gliding experience
Wow, I really can see guys not familiar with soaring in MSFS struggling here, it’s no surprise really as there’s a mix of major issues with the MSFS stock gliders and the MSFS weather which make it more complicated than you’d expect to finesse a good soaring experience. Here’s the rookie tips to get started:
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Do NOT start in the stock DG1001 or LS8. Both those planes have non-working variometers and uncalibrated flight models so as soaring tools they’re seriously handicapped. Superb modelling though.
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There are excellent 3rd-party freeware gliders available, including: T31 (wood, ancient 2-seater trainer, fun), K7 (wood, low performance, great training glider), LS4 (glass 15m no flaps, good 1st cross country), Discus (glass 18m no flaps, good performance, best with the LXN nav mod), DG808S (glass, 18m flapped, high performance, best with the LXN nav mod), AS33 (glass, 18m flapped, high performance), JS3 (glass, 18m flapped, high performance). To find any of these type “MSFS XX” into google where XX is exactly the bold plane name given above e.g. “MSFS LS4”.
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Asking which glider is “best” is itself a rookie question. If you’ve never flown a glider before, do NOT jump straight into a 18m flapped heavily ballasted racing glider. You’re simply trying to learn too much at once and it’s more fun if you start on something like the LS4 e.g. that loads into the sim without water ballast by default (there’s a switch you click twice to load ballast). Even a K7 launch from Nikolsdorf with a 15 knot wind from the South will give you a great time soaring the adjacent slopes on the North side of the valley while you probe for lift while flying at 50 knots and look at the incredible scenery.
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Here’s the crunch: setting soaring weather in MSFS is truly an art form as thermals and ridge lift in MSFS is a complex mess of code which usually gives lift where you don’t expect it, and often not under clouds where you do expect it. When you’re first starting out the simplest thing to do is fly in the Alps and set the wind at 15 knots from the North or the South. That will get the ridge lift working in the East-West valleys that predominate in that region. You MUST grasp the basic concept of wind blowing UP hillsides generates usable lift, so fly close to the slope that has the wind blowing UP it, not the other side of the valley. See also the most important last point on this list.
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In any of the gliders you initiate the aerotow by selecting that ‘Launch Method’ before you enter the sim, and on the runway with the tow plane now in front of you and Jimmy holding your wing, waggle the rudder to get going. It’s really good fun, and the freeware gliders all have decent handling so the launch is certainly doable. If you launch in an ‘unsuitable’ airport e.g. a small grass field in complex terrain then the tow plane will likely tow you a bit but give up half way down the runway. Fussen is a really nice airfield to launch from if you’ve never tried it. Make sure the wind is down the runway.
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You can’t work all this out on your own. There are cross-country tasks with appropriate weather that can be flown multiplayer or solo and plenty of folks generous with their advice at the Sim Soaring Club
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Awesome response B21 , The LS 4 is super cool for learning .
Hoping in the near future MS/Asobo will take gliding seriously, although not main stream .
The weather we use is very important to all simmers what ever they fly .
Really hope they listen and not discourage more potential new glider pilots.
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I have downloaded a couple of gliders from there and put the extracted folders in my packages/community but nothing ever shows up in my hanger. I find this very furstrating.
So far, the Neo flies just fine, but i keep hearing that the Discus is better. I would love to try it.
As for me I find that flying MSFS works most well. The towplane wake is not not the real thing and the ridgelift is a bit misplaced. I find that the rudder control is a bit twitchy when taxing for takeoff.
One place I failed to successfully fly on aerotow was at the Ranch gliderport near Telluride. At about 10,000 ft the density altitude was such that the tow plane struggled to leave the ground. I couldn’t stay down long enough to avoid burying his prop into the ground. And the runway is very short with a cliff on the end. I switched to a winch launch and that worked far better with a wind setting that was enough to sustain along the many ridges in that area.
Thermals and default gliders work but using live weather does not always produce the required conditions for gliding everywhere you want. It´s better to use a weather preset that contains cumulonimbus (the cotton alike clouds). Just fly below them and you will catch their thermals very easily. You can climb above 15.000ft just using them as they produce a strong lift. All you need to do is orbit around a big cloud following the thermal. Other option you have is ridge soaring close to mountains but for that you need some wind too. That´s easier to happen using live weather. Combining the two methods you can stay several minutes airborne without problems.
Cheers
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Absolute right. But most time there is gliding weather everywhere in the world. You can easily find websites like windfinder or which shows glider weather around the world.
The sad thing is there is no time line for real weather.
A 24 hour time line would give the chance the gliding under real weather conditions every place on the world.
I really don’t understand why Asobo or MS does not understand that. WE NEED THAT. SO PLEASE!!!
For me living in Germany and most time flying from 4pm to 10pm, weekends sometimes earlier, I mostly fly in countries in the west from Spain, Westafrika, north and sout Amerika. If it becomes late Hawaii and New Zeeland.
When trying a location and find out that the circumstances are not as wanted I chance the region.
BTW : two days ago I flew the Andes with the 2C FES. So I crossed the Andes from the border of Chile to the east to Argentina. The wind comes from the west and in about 16k feet it got stronger and stronger from 25 to 60knots. It felt like a wave and it was the first time I managed to fly backwards (GS). With about -15kn. But GS of SKY4SIM does not write a negative speed. I noticed that because the numbers where running backwards. I reached FL350 in that condition. From there I tried to reach to Benos Aires. Normaly you would not do that with a Discus in RL also it has an oxygen tank. But Minus 40 °C (same in °F 
) ist not something to have a good feeling. Nevertheless I did not reach Buenos Aires but at a little Airport south of Junin at Laguna de Gomez. The flight took over 5h. Was the longes I did, the highest over Montains, the first with backward flying. A beautifull Landscape. The landing with the deep sun an the red clouds was absolute stunningl.
Despite everything there is to moan about, for me the FS2020 is the best software for experiencing great things.
Regards and great flying Ralf.
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Admittedly, gliding has one disadvantage: You just have to see what the weather conditions are like there and whether it’s worth setting up your glider or taking it out of the hangar.
In contrast to the RL, in 2020 we have the advantage of being able to change the weather or, which is only possible to a limited extent in the RL, we can fly somewhere else in the world.
I’ve already mentioned that I fly most in real weather and why, although I always want to emphasize that I don’t want to devalue flying under preset settings.
For beginners who want to get used to real weather flying, it is of course difficult to find a suitable location if there is no weather suitable for flying in the desired region.
External websites like Windfinder and others have always been a great help to me.
However, in addition to my VR glasses, I always had two monitors on the computer.
Now I have abolished one for reasons of space and am in the same situation as probably many other users here.
Then opening different windows in addition to FS2020 is always a bit cumbersome.
Although I am generally well educated in the functions of FS2020, I had forgotten that such functions also exist in the FS.
Of course you’re lazy with two monitors and opening another window to access the Internet, for example, isn’t a problem.
But weather data can also be displayed in the globe view of 2020:
To do this, click on “more” at the bottom and then on “open filters”.
Here you can now set the “weather layer” or the “wind effect” to the desired setting and can then display cloud cover, rain or winds at different heights.
Of course, the decision as to whether the situation at the chosen location is suitable for flying is not made for you. But it is a quick help without going to an external view.
Just give it a try and I hope it will be a help.
For me the following applies very roughly:
Flatland, warm weather, broken clouds.
Mountains, medium wind speeds, preferably across the mountain ranges.
Another tip:
Many a flight that was difficult to fly at the beginning and I was already thinking about landing outside, went really well afterwards and was crowned with success in retrospect.
So don’t give up straight away. That’s what gliding is all about.
If you haven’t had to make an external landing after many flights, you haven’t flown “real” yet. 
Good luck.
Greetings Ralf
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I recently had some soaring presets in flight sim which I don’t have any more (not the SSC ones)
They were labelled something like “Soaring-Alps” and “Soaring- Cross Country”
I can’t find them anywhere. Probably highly unrealistic but they were the only presets that allowed me to get anywhere in a glider.
Just been gliding in the alps ( Munster to be precise) we had no problems finding lift and managed to get to over 12,000 feet via thermals then picked up updrafts over ridges, we did use a preset from "Floyds Epic Clouds as live weather was unusable. we also did some soaring in Uk before we left for switzerland and once again had no problems. I tend to use presets over live weather as i fly in the evening and live weather wont really have any thermal acivity at night
Will check it out. Thanks
Downloaded the epic clouds on your recommendation and it is fantastic, with 70 presets I was able to find one which closely matched the previous pre sets I had
Thanks!
I just did a 1h flight in the Got Friends Discus around EBTX.
I simply used Active Sky and got thermals.
bump up the thermals