Thermals, Up & Downdrafts - Realism Update/ Airmass Simulation

It is pretty simple really, link realistic (and hence instant aircraft destroying) weather to damage detection. If it can only be enabled with damage detection turned on you bypass all the issues.

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They informed us of the Accessibility in the latest dev update, hope that is to prepare us all for whats coming :slight_smile:

The best bet to get any information is probably the next dev update:

We have found a partner, we gonna announce soon who it is, they have extensive expirence with gliders.
Probably in the next dev update we’ll have them visit and you get to meet them.

We are excited, because that that kind of expertise, you can’t get it if you are not a glider flier.
So we have the right people involved now.

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We are forcing them to make one :)))). Seriously, with good designed thermals the sim will be very close to perfect. I believe that is all about.

I’m not aware of anyone in the sim soaring ‘dev’ community being contacted (it’s not many people, and I’ve worked with pretty much all of them over the years). “Experienced glider pilots” would obviously be great, but TBH you also need sim experience to know where the sims are likely to cut corners. You need to look out for the shortcuts taken in the past, which include:

  • thermals not having a realistic shape or lifecycle (i.e. a simple cylinder is easier).

  • thermals being unrelated to clouds, horizontally or vertically.

  • thermals being too strong (you get fewer complaints then, plus you don’t need as many)

  • thermals always being in the same fixed positions (makes multiplayer easier)

  • thermals being unrelated to the ground beneath.

There’s no reason to be pessimistic about these in MSFS, but any real glider pilot would need to be well aware of these common sim compromises so they don’t give the thumbs-up for a test that involves flying through a single thermal. Actually, apart from the cloud link, which requires support for that in the core sim, the things above are pretty straightforward to do better in the code.

B21

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It’s easy to forget what’s already in the sim, just take a look at the Feature Discovery Series 3 - Aerodynamics (8:28 timestamp):

  • volumetric clouds match turbulences, up & down draft :white_check_mark:
  • native support of storms, supercells, TCU… :white_check_mark:

Thomas said it’s all naturally simulated, we have all the up & down drafts wich match the actual weather, cumulus clouds are dangerous for small GA’s and so on… temperature + ground related drafts were also confirmed in an Q&A.

It’s all there thanks to the completely new developed airmass engine, which he mentioned at the beginning. But then they decided to limit the whole thing with no option, because of people who couldn’t understand the realism and said they gonna work on helping visualisations.

That’s why I don’t think the Glider dev team gonna rewrite the core of the air mass simulation, they gonna work with the ‘‘original unlimited engine’’. But it stays interesting who these people are.

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Let me just point out that Asobo has made a substantial progress towards improving the atmospherics and subsequently flight physics. You just can’t say they aren’t doing much, or haven’t done much in regards to that.

This simulator is the most complex and highest fidelity flight simulation that I’ve ever seen in my life. There are so many elements, it goes in such details that it’s insane.

There cannot be the “on/off” switch for these kinds of thing because we all share the sim world directly or indirectly.
It prolly might be possible in some cases with all online features completely turned off, mainly traffic and other players.
Maybe I am mistaken, though.

However, I am not mistaken when I say they’ve done a lot. There is a reson for all the present limitations they’ve imposed. They certainly are not working on all the details so much, with such engagement towards the partnerships and with the 3rd parties, and then just go like “oh let’s limit the sim cuz it’s so cool”.
Isn’t logical, right ? :smiley:

There are issues in the base sim that require attention first. Those include the avionics that they have the Working Title team working on improving, they deal with the implementation of the complex study level aircraft that needs to work perfectly within that world with all those and even the tiniest mechanisms.

So, let’s just focus at the recent atmospheric pressure fixes. This is the first simulator that actually simulates the pressure the way it EXACTLY works in real life. All online networks such as VATSIM have to accommodate such new model, and all of it is interconnected with so many other stuff, simply that one thing is a humongous task !

In the interview they clearly say “when we are ready, we will increase [the atmospheric effects] further”.

I think they are doing great.

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I agree the simulations are amazing. But you say that they should fix issues in the base-sim first? Isn’t the base of flying the winds? If they fix the winds properly at first then it would be easier to fix the avionics wouldn’t it? Otherwise they need to change those fixes when they change the winds again. I’m not a developer though. Maybe they need to make the aircrafts and such before they make the wind in software. In reality, they create aircrafts adapted to the wind, I’m pretty sure because wind we already got plenty of.

Actually you are correct :joy: somehow I went ahead of my thoughts. I wanted to say that there are simple, raw things in the base sim that need sorting out…I mean the atmospheric pressure is such an elementary thing it’s beyond absurd.

So, now that they fixed the pressure, they’ll fix some of those issues with the friction…they said they are actually reworking the ground friction model back in February…and so as they fix those elements, they will progressively build up the more realistic winds, thermal effects, etc…I guess… :grin:

Honestly, it will be super-cool and I can’t wait to finally see a MICROBURST properly simulated in a desktop sim ! :smiley:

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I agree those friction issues they have i hope they can fix too soon. It will make them have the wind simulated better at groundlevel and make the landings/takeoffs feel more realistic than it is now :slight_smile:

Yes me too :slight_smile:

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here we go… next year… maybe… :neutral_face:

t

hey progress…
2022 ain’t so bad, it’s only 3 months away. Seriously the good news is this has a similar timescale to the gliding update.

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Will see what another team will show us by the end of the next week.

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I kind of misunderstood that they will look into it 2022 :laughing:
but it’s under investigation now and target release is 2022.

So yeah, likely gonna be updated together with the glider release.
Let’s hope the Glider Devs will show up in the next Q&A, would be super interesting.

(The topic got an double arrow ↑↑ , which means we are fastly on the rise :smiley: )

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They stated they’ve reenabled wing gusts again but some additional UX work needed. Oh my, just bring the realistic wing gusts, I couldn’t care less about UX.

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they reenabled wind gusts but not officially, only for development or what does that mean?
wind gusts was just an random effect or is it maybe even linked to the up & down draft limit?
Feels like everything which made the sim realistic got disabled in the past, but good to know they try to bring it back somehow.

My guess was Aerosoft / World of Aircraft, because of their Glider Simulator looked like kind of a tech demo.
Do you know these guys as well?

I wouldn’t be too sure that we gonna see something at the beginning of 2022… just take a look at helicopters, they are talking about the end of 2022.

Asobo got asked about thermals up&down drafts in almost every interview, they stated they gonna update it over the course of this year… then they talked about they gonna work on it later… and now we are at ‘‘investigating’’ they look into it if there is something to do. That’s a little bit weird.

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In the meantime we wait for those limits to unlocked and features playaround with the tempsettings and set it as high as possible in the custom weather then change the winds as you want them. I enjoy the sim so much more since i did try it. It’s more dynamic. They has the thermals with a limit on the effect of temp i think. Look at this i made. The screen is black at the beginning though. I posted the link when the approach starts.

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That would be realistic and isn’t this what everybody wants?
Having to fly around thunderclouds, always keeping an eye on the weather conditions.
Using strong updrafts to your advantage, counter steer strong downdrafts and so on…

flying through a cloud where should be drafts with ‘‘10000’’ feet per minute and not having any effect is the biggest let down in the realism department.

Meanwhile in the real world :smiley: :

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Nicely summarized. That is one of the reasons why l would not mind putting a switch in place “Real”/ “Easy” weather / turbulence. It will still allow people to fly a kite through a hurricane and also would them let experience that this a good way to end your life in the real world.

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Well what will actually happen is they will enable turbulence but turn damage off and then post videos of getting tossed about like a ping pong ball.

Enabling Realistic Turbulence should only be possible if damage detection is enabled.