Gliding improvements in MSFS 2024

Discussion Hub MSFS 2024
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First MSFS 2024 trailer shows off many new game modes for planes and helicopters, but sadly for gliders it shows only vague “glider pilot” scene with an already implemented glider (other scenes show new aircraft models and sim modes).

I hope it is just a placeholder for future elaboration, as a RL glider pilot and person who almost exclusively tries to use MSFS 2020 for flying gliders would be really dissapointed if no significant improvements would be done in MSFS 2024 in gliders area, especially as at current state (thermals, live weather, flight model, flight instruments) it is sadly still far from satisfying, but still has great potential to become best glider sim ever.

While most glider pilots (including myself) would strongly agree that fixes to weather (thermal&cloud modeling and lifecycle, ridge lift, dangerous weather) and it’s parametrization are the most important things that needs improvement for gliders, there are some other things that would be also welcome for gliders.

So I’d like to give some ideas what a “career mode” would mean for RL glider pilots (in style of MSFS 2024 trailer):

1. Multiplayer Gliding competitions

Many RL and virtual glider pilots concentrate their aviation lives around flying gliding competitions.

In RL there are exciting World Gliding Grand Prix with simultaneous start - very spectacular, also easiest to implement and to understand.

MSFS 2024 would be perfect fit for implementation of the idea from Glider races would be Awesome!

What would be needed at minimum in MSFS 2024:

  • Ability to organize, announce and join such races in MSFS (maybe as part of more universal “multiplayer races” MSFS module).
  • Ability to synchronize start of multiplayer weather simulation as currently even when players are using exactly the same weather and time presets (or even live weather) weather/cloud/thermals start evolution when given player press the starts flight button - so they are unsynchronized between players,
    this makes impossible to guarantee exactly same weather conditions during competitions.
    This issue is described more in Multiplayer flying doesn't synchronize weather state - makes multiplayer glider flying (almost) impossible
    Probably a waiting area for competition participants and synchronized flight start for all of them would be the simplest solution to this problem.
  • Improve thermal weather simulation as many aspects - like thermals not in expected in relation to cloud places/their strength/lift distribution, unexpected random small lift over large areas - all make RL gliding racing strategies unrealistic.
  • Some anticheat system.

2. Partnership with FAI virtual gliding for esport gliding competitions
https://www.virtualgliding.fai.org/about
As currently it is done with Condor 2 simulator which clearly shows MSFS is behind in this area.

3. Aerobatic championships

Great for showing off, improving and veryfing MSFS flight model.

What would be needed at minimum in MSFS 2024:

4. Challenging cross country tasks with dynamic in space and time weather.
We mostly already have this by third party means and gentelmans agreement not to cheat (by tweaking gliders or weather).

What would be desired in MSFS 2024:

  • Easy publishing/installation of cross country tasks by players as a single bundle: flight plan (turnpoints shapes and sizes, height limits, prohibited airspaces) + weather + time preset) - for now it requires separate files and manually setting time.
  • Greater ability to specify weather (even if just at XML file level) to set different conditions in different areas and their evolution during flight (current presets are unrealistically static/uniform in space and time for longer glider flights).

5. Wave flying with Ac Lent clouds
While to some extend we have thermal and ridge soaring already implemented in MSFS 2020 we do not have the third common and exciting way of gaining height - often to spectacularly high altitudes (like in Perlan project) - that is wave soaring.

This would require airflow calculation/modelling at greater area
and modeling of Ac Lent clouds.
Probably best to be implemented after fixes to thermal and ridge soaring.

6. Glider SPL training missions*
Personally I would probably prefer various weather fixes over it, but many people would be more interested in gliders if there would have some deeper traning missions that would teach them soaring aspects in greater detail - like teaching all the tasks needed for SPL license and cross country soaring.
In MSFS 2020 there are some glider training missions but sadly their implementation is so shallow that they are more of a misrepresentation of soaring to greater audience than encouragement to understanding what gliding is all about.
Especially thermalling lesson due to incorrect thermal modelling rather makes thermal gliding random and incomprehensible (not much connection between Cu clouds and thermals), also ridge soaring with fake 3d thermal visualization used as ridge lift visualization are broken by design.

7. Weather improvements/fixes
As stated in the introduction - most important for serious gliding simulation is proper simulation of weather. Most glider pilots want it/expect it from future of Microsoft Flight Sumulator future.

  • proper thermals placement/alignment under Cu clouds - with significant thermal core worth circling around. Shape of Cu cloud should hint where the lift is.
  • any thermals in “blue sky” areas between Cu clouds should after a while form a new cloud - so a proper thermal&cloud lifecycle - so proper thermal/cloud lifecycle. Also as of SU12 many clouds morph too quickly.
  • get rid of unexpected ambient lift - as of SU12 there is way too much small rising components of lift thus making glider performance (glide ratio) way too high and making thermalling often unnecessary as flying straight you often get too much lift.
  • clouds in live weather often do not provide as much lift as they do in RL - it is easy to determine RL conditions by watching live gliders on OGN network - https://live.glidernet.org - often in MSFS there are Cu clouds, but provide only faint lift as in MSFS only dense clouds settable in presets provide strong lift.
  • no abrupt updates to weather state
  • ability to choose soaring index/Xcountry distance or other gliding weather forecast scoring (similiar to what MeteoBlue provides) as a layer on the “preflight globe” map just like wind/precipitation filters already available in MSFS2020.

Hope all above mentioned gliding topics will give you inspiration to provide us with great glider flying experience in MSFS 2024 :slight_smile:

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That would be really cool.

Gliders in Flight Sims have always been so-so due to the poor airflow calculations.

MSFS brought improvements, but really there is a lot of room for improvement here, and that improvement will also improve other planes if done right.

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The most important thing for Gliders in MSFS 2024 will be the weather improvements.

The Thermal model needs improvements badly.

  • more lift below clouds / less lift from hot ground

The Ridge lift simulation also has some flaws that should be fixed.

  • much less lift high above the ridges

Besides weather, i agree that we need more focus on the sport aspects of gliding.
I like all suggestion mentioned in the OP.
Proper support of Glider Tasks is the foundation for all of that.
It’s something that is currently only possible through third party apps/mods.

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They all are awesome suggestions .

I am for sure hoping for the improvements we have asked for .

Surely every sim pilot would want realistic weather .

Also the implementation of gliders would have put so many inquisitive potential glider pilots off big time when they couldn’t even fly default .
We are indeed lucky that the glider sim community has made work around and developed so many gliders and apps to evovle into what we currently do now .

Please MS/Asobo we are not loud but still very very passionate about correct weather .
Everyone flys , no one is left behind , is that not your moto.

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The sky is calling …

No the sky is incorrect :slight_smile:

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I agree with you, to bring more of the competition aspect to MSFS2024, since the scenery is fabulous it is fantastic to fly in, but it gets ruined by the terrible air simulation. So that is something that is necessary for competition soaring.

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Great post @EPPRglider81 - good explanation of what the MSFS lift/sink implementation could do. We do spend a lot of time trying to get small adjustments made to the current MSFS lift/sink algorithms but it’s helpful to open out the vision and show what real improvements would look like. With a bit of luck Asobo do take notice of this stuff, they’re pretty low key about it though.

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Hi EPPRglider81, Hi everyone,

I am the Director of FAI Virtual Gliding and also part of the organizing team of the real Sailplane Grand Prix events. We are in deep preparation at the moment for both the real and virtual events that will take place in Pavullo (Italy), from 27th of August to 2nd of September.

I would like to thank you for your comments about SGP and Virtual Gliding! We are doing our very best to create exciting events for the community and the fans.

Thank you for this post and for the great input and ideas you are having about the development of gliding within MSFS. It is something we are really keeping an eye on.

If MSFS is able to improve flight models, weather settings and anti-cheating tools, then we will probably have a closer look to how we can produce official FAI races there as well. Reno Air Race add-on was really promising and opens new possibilities, but we are not there yet.

For now, Condor is the only suitable tool for FAI virtual events that guarantees the fairness of air sports and realistic flight conditions. We expect the version 3 soon, so I guess there will be a fight between MSFS and Condor 3 if they can both improve a lot in their next versions :wink:

The year 2024 will mark another milestone for e-airsports as we expect to be running the 1st FAI Virtual World Gliding Championship (classic format with RTs and AATs).

See you in two months for exciting SGP races! They will be livestreamed on twitch and youtube of course, via the FAI Virtual Gliding & Sailplane Grand Prix channels.

Our DMs are always open and anyone, from developers to fans are welcome to contact us here: fai.virtual.gliding@gmail.com

Safe flights,

Antoine Havet

PS: thank you as well for citing OGN, a tool created by our technical director. A tool that has saved many lives already when people are missing at the end of the day and we need to launch SAR missions…

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Hi,
Thank you for the kind words, thank you for your work on FAI Virtual Gliding and SGP.

Also thank you for being open for contact and help - hope FS Forum moderators will take notice and forward your mail to people planning MSFS2024 features and maybe something good for MSFS gliding will happen :).

MSFS has so huge potential for having realistic soaring and also gliding competitions - with gigantic simming community after fixing some weather/flight model deficiencies it could properly introduce and make more understandable and accessible our beloved sport to much wider audience of simmers and people interested in becoming RL glider pilots.
Learning the skill to read, what seems to be invisible - thermals, harness the power of nature to perform a many miles long, zero emission soaring flight - somewhat even better than birds, as they can always “cheat” and help themselves by flapping their wings, is a life changing experience - sky never looks the same again :).

Most components, at least in their basic form seem to be already there - mostly strategic will and focused cooperation with people with real knowledge and passion for gliding are necessary to improve things to realistic level.
That seem was the receipe for Condor small team’s great success - they knew how gliding & weather works and were able to simulate the most important aspects even on way less computationally capable hardware many years ago (at Condor 1 times) at good enough level for RL glider pilots to enjoy.

Introduction of brand new MSFS version 2024 could be a great opportunity to break away from some old & incorrect MSFS 2020 implementation of weather aspects (cloud-thermal spatial relation, thermal strength distribution, cloud types & their thermal evolution, weather preset parameters) and flight model (negative flaps, glide polar, dynamic stall, rudder handling, inertia etc) and introduce drastically improved, more realistic versions in 2024 edition, also justifing this way release of new edition.

I and also some model developers, think that working on realistic FM for gliders first would be very beneficial for Ms/Asobo as engine force overwhelms more fundamental aspects of flight model coming from shape aerodynamics, so powered flight may mask FM deficiences. And only after having glider flight model thoroughly verified, for example with glider aerobatic competition level pilots and/or people specializing in glider performance, to progress with adding engine to the picture.

IMHO even few sessions with top level aerobatic glider pilots would provide so much valuable feedback about FM deficiences in MSFS,
also listening to thought proces of RL cross country pilots about where in given MSFS cloud visualization state they would expect thermals (and where not) would help to improve thermal model.
Simple things, but they require focused work.

Anti cheat system shouldn’t be something totaly new for Asobo which has it’s roots in making games.

Life weather, if thermals worked properly, would push competition flying to next level as no preset weather can offer such dynamism in space and time as live weather.
My dream is to someday be able to plan a cross country flight using a real soaring weather forecast service like https://skysight.io/ or https://fcst24.com/ and experience, during many hour flight, weather changing similarly to forecasted in the simulator (it doesn’t need to match exactly! - no forecast matches live weather perfectly either, it just need to be as dynamic and complicated).

At current state MSFS is quite an advertisment for Condor as some simming people who get somewhat hooked to gliding in MSFS just because it can be easily tried there,
after finding out about discrepancies from reality quickly learn and start using Condor.

Glider community took notice about bold Jorg’s Neumann statement “Wir haben uns Condor sehr genau angeschaut. Wir werden wir besser hinbekommen.” - “We took a very close look at Condor. We’ll do it better.” expressed in interview Segelflug im Microsoft Flight Simulator | STERN.de
Is it possible? - sure, but it is not achievable without professional, well informed and focused on such goal work!

BTW Please, maybe near the event dates, post info about upcoming streams of SGP and FAI Virtual gliding in Gliders - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums MSFS subforum as I feel this is very much in line with this subforum purpose and on topic as it may help people to understand what gliding competitions are about and how simulators can be used for realistic modeling them (someday hopefully it would be MSFS :slight_smile: ).

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Hi EPPRglider81, Hi everyone!

Thank you for your kind message and your support!
I will reply to every point above and try to be precise.

  • We are always open to talks with MSFS people in charge of gliding obviously, and I will explain more below our POV on the dev.

  • MSFS has a huge potential thanks to its successful past and Microsoft (which is quite a big company) supporting it. They have been able to create new simulators every few years or decade. Their sims have always been a first step and springboard to a real career in aviation. It has an underestimated impact on the aviation industry in my opinion.

  • There is a big work that needs to be done around gliding to improve the weather model and suits our needs. We don’t think that real time weather will make it work, it is way too complex to put in place in the sim to replicate the reality of thermals, convergence, at a certain point. At least, it is not possible to fly with real time weather for competitions for several reasons:
    a) we race at specific times of the day, and often in the evening → we cannot race night time
    b) organizers need to be able to select the weather, and if possible creating it by zones/area, so that it is not homogeneous throughout the flight/task. The most difficult thing in gliding is to anticipate… and there is not much anticipation possible when the Wx is the same everywhere.
    c) stability of the Sim - same Wx for everyone, and much more…

  • There needs to be different ways to develop the sport in the sim:
    a) training (school) via the MSFS Challenges tool (there are some lessons today already, but it needs to be more developed, in a more structured way, compared to what is done IRL)
    b) understand the sky (fly on your own) - Freeflight with pre-set weather (can be done thanks to you guys)
    c) challenge yourself (join your first multiplayer races and understand how to race + rules): can be done with you again.
    d) compete to events (FAI Virtual Gliding in MSFS some day… ?): I think it will only be possible through a closed module like the Reno Air Race. We are making ourselves available to create a module for Sailplane Grand Prix, if MSFS or a third party is ready to do it. I have all the material from Logo, approvals, rules, whatever… you can imagine. It is feasible if someone wants to do it. Racing amongst 20 pilots can only be fun with the regatta start… shall I create a separate topic on the Gliding forum of MSFS?

  • Condor is a really, really good simulator, and the version 3 coming is going to be a must for the gliding community. There is a lot of work to catch them up, IMO. They are helping a lot the development of simulator training in flight schools for years, and they are a great partner that can adapt to any gliding association needs. It’s always a big risk if we decide to work, with MSFS instead of Condor… but I don’t think that we must chose between the two. Both can live together in the long term.

  • I can provide help and contacts for top aerobatics pilots if needed for development/improvement. Just ask :slight_smile:

  • I and other skillful glider pilots can help to explain how Wx works and the system around it, and how we use it in a efficient way. Where the thermal is created, how it is placed VS the cloud above etc… those are simple things indeed, but they need to be well understood. Available for that as well via email or PM.

  • Less cheating problems with a close module like Reno Air Race IMO.

  • I shared my thoughts about Live Weather above, I think that would be quite insane if it works, but I doubt that it can replicate the weather as nice as we want it. But if it works… it would be quite cool for the community! I can provide direct contact with SkySight if Asobo and MSFS want to work on that as well.

  • Agree that Condor is still above for pure gliding, but MSFS has much more capacity to develop fast and a lot of people are attracted by the beauty of MSFS. I am looking forward to see if they can do much better than Condor! :wink: Would be great for the development of gliding worldwide for sure.

  • You can follow our schedule here: https://www.virtualgliding.fai.org/schedule
    I really invite everyone to watch the Virtual SGP World Final, because we are going to introduce a lot of new stuff, and there should be some nice stuff for the public to win… :joystick: :smirk:
    https://www.virtualgliding.fai.org/virtual-sgp

Will give the info about real SGP races later… :slight_smile:
Have a good day,

Antoine
fai.virtual.gliding@gmail.com

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I understand those who want the sim weather to look exactly how it looks like outside their windows. And i understand those who needs the weather to match their planning-tools. But the need to have the weather exactly like it is outside our windows conflicts to make the atmosphere feel and behave realistic. The real weather/atmosphere is not fixed in a specific state.

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Thank you very much for the effort you did. But at this time I am very disappointed that I count only 17 likes. :disappointed_relieved:
Ps mine was 18th.

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+1 :+1: :wind_face: :small_airplane:

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We all know that when it comes to gliding, it’s all about weather. According to my information, the data for this is generated from the Metar data and with data from other providers. I think it is very likely that all this data does not cover the local range.
For me, this lack of data becomes quite clear when I orientate myself to the metar data for local weather.
The metar data only covers the data that is necessary for safe flight operations.
Even if the metar data in the FS sometimes lags behind the real data, there are big differences to be seen in many situations. In this case, the metar data in the FS was correct:

Meta
Meta1471×978 186 KB

Weather in FS:
FSweather
FSweather1926×1073 260 KB

Weather in real,a little further south from the airfield:
RL weather
RL weather1280×640 104 KB

The glider airfield is in the immediate vicinity of EDDL Duesseldorf International, where the weather is the same.
I think the problem that the Metar data does not show clouds above 5000ft makes it very difficult to correctly represent the local weather, especially for gliding.
How can this gap be closed with the FS2024?
Or does anyone have information that I have not noticed?
All the best
Ralf

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We would all be better of if the next Condor version came out as an MSFS add-on, I’m sure the Condor team puts a lot of effort in visuals but it is unlikely they’ll ever get even close to what MSFS has.

Not sure what the 2024 SDK will look like but if it would allow implementing a Condor-level weather/aircraft model, that’s what they should be working on, using MSFS as a platform and let them do what they can best.

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It won’t happen and IMHO shoudn’t.
From technical point it is impossible to port most of the stuff Condor does as an add-on nor would be possible even with some effort from Ms/Asobo side and we shouldn’t count on greater directed only to porting effort.

“Beauty is only skin deep” - it would be way easier to port Condor to modern graphics engine like Unreal 5 for easy gains than to port all non graphics stuff to MSFS.

Condor devs in standalone product have full control over every tiny detail of simulation - not only flight model and weather, but well tested gliders, task planning, scoring, network multiplayer synchronization, anti-cheating, performance, nav computer, cloud rendering and… price.

They offer a well designed/thought out full featured ready to use glider sim - it is impossible to provide same user experience with an add on.

Why on earth Condor devs should ditch all those effort, spent long years porting just to tie themselves to something they have not much control over - that is MSFS platform? They won’t and I perfectly understand that.

Moreover glider community is better off with having separate glider sims that all have their good sides and weaker ones, then be stuck with one product.

We can hope both glider implementation in MSFS will get inspired by Condor features and Condor will be motivated to gain some features from MSFS (like live weather, cloud shapes/types, better tow plane physics, ground physics - there are some things MSFS already does better than Condor - although from glider perspective not the most important ones).

It was discussed both at MS Forum and Condor forum it is rather counterproductive to discuss it here - it is better to concentrate on what aspects/features of Condor would be helpful to be introduced in MSFS 2024.

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I’m sorry, wasn’t aware of those discussions. Just one last comment: I absolutely did not mean them to ditch whatever they have, on the contrary, keep all that good stuff and use MSFS just like they would a game engine. Won’t bring it up again, I promise.