Thermals, Up & Downdrafts - Realism Update/ Airmass Simulation

We could have gotten a lot more informations if this security guy didn’t walked in and interrupted Seb in the middle of his answer… very frustrating! :sweat_smile:

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First of all I am really gratefull for all the information they stated - they really prepared this answer - many higher voted question had less informative answers.

Now about the winds - there is no simple straight correlation between more wind - more thermals as they seem to state.

Main component of wind during the day is due to largescale baric situation - Geostrophic wind swirls around hi/low pressure centers (those cyclones/anticyclones) - commonly comparable to the size of countries - this is nicely visualized at windy.com when you turn on isobars and particle visualization.
Those are not thermals and have nothing to do with them - low presser area indeed means air rising, but it is way too slow to be usable for gliders.

Now - thermals will cause wind (not the other way around!), as quickly rising air must be replaced by new air - this sucked air will come from every possible direction and is very local - so it has nothing to do with abovementioned “general” baric wind - so also nothing to do with the wind you set in presets (where you set speed & direction) - I would said it is more like gusts as this wind caused by thermals won’t be constant or long lasting - as thermals get created and after about 15 mins end.

Moreover I’d say too strong wind will tear thermals (and clouds) apart - completly not good thermal gliding weather.

And you also can have more calm day - no strong wind caused by baric situation - which will allow airmass to stay longer over warm ground or heat over dark roofs and only periodic wind when thermal is born.

So this relation of thermals and wind is wrong - it is very like a programming bandaid - their preset parameters don’t have the “source” parameters for thermal generation (like temp gradient - read about skew-t diagrams and temperature inversion height) so they sadly try to marry unrelated parameters.

I’d say weather presets as they are now are completly lost cause for generating realistic gliding weather - it would require to have source parameters - baric centers, their movement and change in time, vertical temp gradient & moisture and also their change in time - way too many too complicated things to be set up by humans.
I count more on realistic live weather and strongly hope we will be able to record/refly historic weather (it is also on wishlist).

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thanks for the very good explanation!

The planned correlation setting between wind and thermals seems like it’s an reaction over many casual people complaining ‘‘I have set wind to zero, why do I get thermals??’’. It’s the old ‘‘people don’t understand it, so we have to reduce it’’ all over again.

It’s a step in the wrong direction and doesn’t make much sense as you correctly explained thermals already. If thermals gonna scale completely with the wind it’s gonna be the end of gliding in msfs.

So I really hope this is just a placeholder for the expanded CFD simulation (which sounds really good and looks like a big step in the realism department)

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Yeah, it’s really disheartening to hear that they’re taking a step back on the thermal dynamics, which been really fun with the third-party sailplanes. I never felt like they were over done or uncontrollable. It feels like the devs are just giving into the naysayer crowd’s complaints, instead of listening to those of us that actually like the new wind systems that got added.

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Yup. Why can’t they treat us like adults and instead of reacting in panic to people complaining and immediately reversing what they literally only just introduced, explain how thermals work and why turbulence exists with calm winds in real life?

They have a chance to educate people and instead capitulate and deliberately reduce the realism.

I don’t mind an option to turn it off for people who want to fly without a bump, but please don’t force lower realism on the rest of us. Reading the threads about turbulence, it’s clear some people are seeing the slightest bump as equivalent to moderate - extreme turbulence, and Asobo has decided to adjust the sim to satisfy them rather than simply explain how weather works. So sad.

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It’s the “lets limit vertical winds speed” thing all over again.
Instead of keeping it realistic they capped the speed of vertical winds, because people would fly into thunderstorms and get ripped to pieces in 7000ft vertical winds and think their sim is broken…

Can’t have that. So lets make it less realistic, so that the casual flyers never encounter weather were you can’t fly in…

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It’s Asobos choice to do this though. They could have just added a feature to allow people to set the turbulence to “Realistic” or to some lower level using a slider but I guess they cannot do that so have instead decided to do the simplest thing which is capitulate to the moaners.

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Eh, it feels like I’m going back to X-Plane again.

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Yes, as long as we can fly with an Top Rudder 103 Solo straight through any thunder storm/ bad weather the simulation is nowhere near realistic, it’s simple as that.

It was very far away from beeing realistic for over a year, now with the thermal update it got one step closer and with the next simupdate it feels like we gonna take 10 steps back.

It’s sad they always chose the arcade side over real simulation, just because a bunch of people complaining with toxic arguments which are based on literally nothing. (talking about the Turbulence – excessive or real world realistic thread )

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So sad really, we are 525 votes here that have waited so long for the air to behave more like real air does and then a topic with around 20 votes to remove that gets their voices heard instantly.

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I can’t say better than the previous comments, it’s just unbelievable that SU10 could be a step back in terms of realism about the weather!
Asobo started to be on the right patch to make MFS2020 realistic! I can’t believe what I’ve heard in the interview Q&A, it is so confusing and yeap this security guard who did break the topic, so what else?

Since SU9, for the very first time I didn’t switch to Xplane 11 so far because I felt and still feel that with SU9 MFS2020 atmosphere is much more alive and coherent than before based on the weather conditions of the day, even if it’s still missing some important features as Gust, Convectives, lethal turbulence in TS etc I mean we better feel the Air Mass Movement now somehow…

I wish we are wrong and that the CFD will bring something new to avoid a step backward, same for the gust winds that should be back and implemented in SU10.
I guess despite they will reduce Turb over 20K (I didn’t understand the purpose but anyway also despite of the limitation of vertical winds that hopefully the addition of the Gust and some improvement of CFD could make the difference in front of the step back about limitations… I wish it so badly! If not, yeap I go back to Xplane while…

I can’t believe in what I read in post like “Turbulence are too strong I think” or “Turb overdone/excessive” It looks like the majority in the very wrong perception of the reality in aviation always win to be heard more than the facts and the empirical truth !

I don’t want to speculate but I really wish that turbulence won’t be reduced or that it won’t affect a part of realism we gained in our skies by updating to SU9 even if, with such a patience, knowing that we are still waiting for Convective winds in CB/TS updrafts/downdrafts, strong windshear based on the condition of the day, Gust and so on … so why they would like to step back? … they can’t be so afraid at this high level because of casual users or gamers “toxic arguments” who just desire to PLAY MFS2020 in Arcade Mode? !
I mean it won’t make sense if Asobo still want to make MFS2020 as the best realistic FLIGHT SIMULATOR ever! It is definitely possible to make it so however the devs need a solid vision/guideline that goes behind the horizon and a strong faith to face gamers who are complaining because they broke their C152 flying into TS and sure they will say it is “overdone”, an easy word to avoid a solid argumentation…

Wait & See

Happy Flyings Captains! :airplane: :cloud_with_lightning_and_rain: :skull_and_crossbones: :heart_eyes:

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Indeed it sounds crazy and unfair! Let’s see how it goes once we will land on SU10

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I just don’t get it either to be honest. I fly every afternoon (arguably the worst time of day to fly), currently in Northern Italy with temperatures of 24oC and lots of sun and turbulence just isnt that bad. In fact its virtually non existent at 8000 feet and when it does crop up its not terrible either, it just makes final approach with AP off a bit more exciting but its perfectly acceptable. At 1500 feet I can easily sight see so what on earth are people complaining about?

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I know i will like su10 with gusts implemented :slight_smile: I don’t want them to limit thermals to be unrealistic though. I really hope it only is limited in custom weather for those want calm winds in 0 KTS. IRL it’s rare to have less windspeed than 5KTS i think anyway. I have not checked that, can be wrong about that but there is alwasy some movement going on in air. It’s never completely steady.

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And if they want to check out the scenery they can just use the drone cam. Thats not affected by turbulence right?

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Yes why not? I often check out airports using the Drone.

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After reading all these last comments on this thread I have two things to say:

First of all most people here are getting it all wrong…or simply not getting it at all. I mean you keep saying that you don’t want them to take out the turbulence/thermals in the next update…people for the millionth time…no one never said anything about eliminating the turbulence all together…all that people are mainly wishing is for a user adjustable option/slider so that each person can set their desired degree of turbulence or eliminate it all together if they so wish via the “slider”…I mean why on earth would any one of you oppose to such an option?..all of you who desire it can “switch it on” and those of you who don’t want it can switch it off…whats wrong with that?..at the end of the day everybody happy.

And my second observation is that all of you who are currently “afraid” that the next update will be void of turbulence/thermals…well I have news for you…you don’t have to be afraid because the little amount of votes in favour of that are vastly outnumbered by the majority of votes from people who want things to stay the way they are…so its logical to conclude that Asobo is in your favour because trust me Asobo is not going to change things just because 22 or so people are voting for it…that just won’t happen…so again…all of you who are worried about SU10 being even worse…stop worrying…Asobo will not move one single finger just because of 22 votes. That slider will never happen because Asobo will simply not care about " a small bunch of whiners" who want things to change.
So again…stop worrying…you have won…Asobo is on your side. ’
I know that in the last Q&A they mentioned something about “reducing the turbulence”…trust me they will not move one finger to change things…if anything they will even add much more turbulence!..mark my words.

So…there you have it…no worries…no need to go back to x plane or whatever.

Asobo’s rather on the side of the crowd/money. What we’ve been witnessing here is that votes sometimes are not being taken into consideration. But we will defo see what v10 brings to the table. I have no high expectations though.

Just 2 statements are worrying:

  • linking thermals to windspeed, which makes no sense

  • limiting thermals at an certain altitude, which also makes no sense

Both these things are reactions to complaints from people who don’t understand aerodynamics. And to the people who are saying it’s overdone.

We won’t get any option for on and off, which means it’s gonna be "off’’ for everybody. Just like a year ago, when they flatlined the aerodynamics completely and created an “rail simulator”.

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That sounds unbelievable!! how come that silly complaints can have so much power?
That’s crazy and frustrated as xxxx!
And of course it won’t be possible to avoid that sim update10 and stay stuck to the current one!

Guys really I wish we are wrong in our speculations but it feels bad if it goes this way, Asobo can’t be so weak to please only GTA gamers ! Come on! It can’t!

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