Georg correctly draws attention to the main cause of problems in SU11 with the implementation of thermals. These are not mistakes, but a deliberate simplification of flow modeling for the sake of novice glider users.
Alas, such an incorrect decision has harmed not only all pilots of airplanes and gliders, but also novice pilots themselves, who, even with their little experience, perfectly notice the unreality of the behavior of the atmosphere in MSFS.
6 Likes
The absolutely crucial point to understand about the CumulusX soaring weather addon in FSX is that the thermal/cloud model is a SINGLE model.
Air rises from the ground, forms a cloud, rising air peters out, either another thermal arrives or the cloud dissipates.
It is impossible to simulate thermals with the cloud model independent from the thermal model and Asobo have been incredibly vague for months about what they have or what they intend to have, and then delivered the spectacularly poor implementation of rising air in SU11. It is understandable the gliding community is concerned that Asobo doesn’t understand the basic mechanism involved.
6 Likes
As a real-life sailplane pilot, I said at the outset that if they didn’t intend to replicate atmospheric behavior with a very high degree of fidelity then adding gliders would be a gigantic waste of time. Soaring is all about the challenge of finding and exploiting various forms of lift, and there is great satisfaction in developing the skill over time to do so. Powered aircraft pilots (and certainly casual users) will likely not notice if what they view only as “turbulence” isn’t exactly correctly modeled, because they’re just using thrust to plow through it anyway. It’s a bit like using a meat cleaver to chop up a cow carcass. Flying a sailplane, though, is more like performing delicate surgery, expertly evaluating the minute to minute variations in the atmosphere, and flying precise speeds while perfectly coordinated in order to get the most energy out of it.
The very heart of soaring is that delicate dance with the atmosphere. It’s not about, as seems to be the case in the sim at the moment, just flying another airplane with really long wings around aimlessly. And ridge and wave lift are every bit as important as thermals. Perlan didn’t set the world glider altitude record at 76,000 feet using thermals. High-altitude flight is an integral part of soaring, and it can only be done using wave.
The highest you’re going to get on thermals alone, in the real world, is about 18,000 feet, give or take (assuming you’re not climbing under a thunderstorm, and you hit Class A airspace at 18,000 as well, while ATC often opens airspace windows well into the flight levels for wave flying). And that’s only on a strong day in the western U.S. or certain other arid regions around the world.
7 Likes
I wouldn’t describe gliding weather simulation it such a binary way - either “high degree of fidelity” or “waste of time”.
The thing is: MSFS tried to created ground breaking, innovative computatioinal fluid dynamics highly complicated weather model and it may very well evolve into very realistic glider weather simulator, but at current stage it simply misses the fundamental basics of thermals: thermals do not form Cu clouds, Cu clouds appear and disappear without lift/sink below them, airmass rise parallel without converging, are too wide (“whole city rising”), too strong without proper lift distribution, without lift core or abrupt very strong lift.
No matter how computationally complicated the underlying model is if the outcome is so far from basic properties.
The bitter irony is to get the basics right it could be modeled way easier. Condor 1,2 thermals/Cu clouds are by todays computational possibilities very primitive - yet they simply get the basics right and it satisfies many RL glider pilots enough to find it enjoyable.
Case in point - I’d argue somewhat provocatively that this free android game ‘Flight Club’
gets the basics of thermals/Cu better than current MSFS implementation!
You have cloud evolution, you have lift under clouds, better looking clouds have better lift, clouds dissipate and then may even generate sink, you do not have magical shooting strong blue thermals between clouds.
So you can do a classic cross country soaring as in RL - simplicity doesn’t prevent you enjoying it as nothing strongly contradicts RL experience.
I bet if Asobo would make even such primitive implementation people would be way more satisfied than with currently complicated, ambitious CFD model.
As a RL glider pilot I am all for realism, but please first get the basics of thermal model right!
8 Likes
The issue i see is that clouds can’t be formed because of the condition (heat generated on ground) The weather need to be fixed to be able to plan a flight some says. They can’t both simulate heat generating thermals and at the same time have fixed clouds to fit a METAR state for example.
I agree, they need to implement it basic without CFD. They need to make the clouds decide the thermals instead of the ground. Because we need to have the weather fixed as METAR says for some users to feel the weather is realistic.
I had hopes to finally see a really advanced weather system in MSFS, but that hope is now gone. So sad.
They talking about a more advanced thermal system though. Hope they implement that in next update. Can’t understand why they didn’t implement that instantly. Do they want it to be an arcade game? Simulators is meant to be a learning tool. They said it were too hard to find thermals with the more realistic version. But it’s the point to learn how to find those thermals. And before we have learned it may be hard for some users for sure. But the community is helping right? And some tutorials would also help learning gliders.
1 Like
I remember that as a PC/browser game way, way, back (sadly defunct? Flight Club - an interactive glider game). Looks like the Android may well have borrowed some aspects of that great little game
Yes I remember it was a Java applet by Dan Burton who apparently died in 2005 in an accident. Java applet technology due to security concerns is also gone.
And as expressed by the author this android game is a direct fan remake/tribute to Dan’s oryginal game.
1 Like
I had no idea, that’s sad to hear - an unpleasant coincidence that another Dan Burton died last year whilst paragliding which I now recall was quite publicised locally (I’m about 20 miles from where that chap lived).
Anyway, glad to know that it’s done as a tribute - going to download it now and relive some memories.
If that’s why Asobo has so over-simplified the convection model then it’s a very poor reason for doing so. In real life, flight instructors will at first intentionally schedule training sessions with novice, pre-solo students for the early morning hours when convection is weak and the air is smooth. This enables the student to learn the basics without having to deal with convective turbulence. As the student progresses, and especially as they start to learn how to thermal and gain altitude, then training flights will migrate to the afternoon hours when thermal lift is stronger.
So if Asobo is concerned about dumbing down convective activity to satisfy casual users, then all they need to do is make thermal behavior subject to time of day (as it is in real life anyway) and make it clear that if you want easy, smooth flight then fly in the morning, and if you want stronger convective lift then fly more in the afternoon.
Either way, though, the “whole sky rising” way in which the sim currently treats convection must change to something at least approximating individual rising columns of air, surrounded by sink. Cross country flight in particular will hold no attraction if realistic thermals don’t exist.
8 Likes
That sounds like some weird hybrid of ridge and wave lift. Any thermals would be completely disrupted by shear in such high winds. But then, the sim’s idea of thermals is so unrealistic, who knows what it’s doing in such a situation?
2 Likes
Maybe a screenshot with the visualization tool could have helped to see what’s going on.
But sounds like the broken unstoppable ridge lift to the moon again, since they decided to not implement Wave lift.
Or just one of the big arcade thermals like you said.
2 Likes
Read Error 18:
3 Likes
In a german interview Jorg Neumann talks about Thermals and the weather physics in general.
Here are some of the keypoints he says:
- currently they are working on high altitude turbulence
- acknowledges that clouds are only visually represented, they have nothing to do with the ground or with rising air masses
- Thermals are randomly distributed across the landscape
- they were looking into the community feedback and definitely gonna revisit thermals and readjust
- they want to beat condor in terms of weather and cloud physics simulation
7 Likes
Apparently he doesn’t know that starting from SU 5, every cloud in his MSFS generates a thermal.
Apparently he does not know that starting from SU 10, different types of surfaces in his MSFS generate thermals depending on the type of terrine and the illumination by the sun.
1 Like
I think he meant that the additional new thermal system does not interact with the clouds (general updrafts generated by storm clouds was there before, but that’s something different).
That’s what’s happening, but there are also a lot more and bigger ‘‘thermals’’ randomly generated, because of the decision to use the ‘‘userfriendly’’ simplified thermal system instead of the more realsitic one (however that one would look like).
3 Likes
Now I’m totally confused, what about reports like Too small distances between thermals suitable for gliding, complaining about no thermals under the clouds but many elsewhere?
Depending on their density clouds can produce updrafts but wont form a classic thermal, that’s what’s happening since SU5, I don’t know if this was even intended or more like a bug, but you could soar under rain/storm clouds because of that.
The newly implemented thermal system however doesn’t correlate to the clouds in any form and thermals get spread out randomly (but still effected by other values, like temperature and so on).
The current system needs big adjustements / reworks, if they want to call it realistic.
Read this error message Errors of AMBIENT WIND Y dependencies on the values of flight conditions and terrain settings in SU11 and you will understand what termals now exist in MSFS and why many users complain about their excess and their shortcomings.
I’m sorry, just got back to FS2020 after they made the gliders/thermals in SU11, not familiar with the history, how exactly these are different from a “classic” thermal?
No problem, basically when you create an dark cloud layer you get constant updraft everywhere beneath that. That was discovered around SU5.This constant updraft is unrealistic and probably a bug.
A thermal has a core where the air goes up and on the sides you have down drafts / turbulence.
I can recommend the link Anri shared above where he explaines everything in detail. There you get an overview of what’s wrong with the thermal system currently.
2 Likes