Sublime Soaring

[Jayhawk Jake]

I was thinking about soaring at work today and how cool it is, and how I might actually try to take it up at some point in the future.

[krigl]

Soaring in FSX is great fun! For such a peaceful pursuit it's curiously exciting.

I've always meant to check out Aerotow for FSX gliding; you may be interested...

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/s ... -aircraft-!

Lovely shots, of course!!

[ArcticFox]

Stuff like this reminds one how varied and great fsx really is.

[Jayhawk Jake]

Soaring in FSX is great fun! For such a peaceful pursuit it's curiously exciting.

I've always meant to check out Aerotow for FSX gliding; you may be interested...

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/s ... -aircraft-!

Lovely shots, of course!!

Interesting...I may give it a try, thanks!

[Daube]

What Krigl said => install Aerotow, as well as CumulusX, and enjoy your guided two plane and ridge lifts
Those shots are really excellent, I love the colors and those view angles that you used. You just gave me the will to restart my gliding flights in FSX, thanks !

[Flying Trucker]

Wonderful shots Krigl...well done...

[Jayhawk Jake]

What Krigl said => install Aerotow, as well as CumulusX, and enjoy your guided two plane and ridge lifts
Those shots are really excellent, I love the colors and those view angles that you used. You just gave me the will to restart my gliding flights in FSX, thanks !

It's unfortunate timing, all this cool gliding stuff makes me want to glide, but I just bought the Carenado JetPROP so I have to fly that!

I need some other gliders, probably some of Wolfgang Piper's.  I mean, the default is great, but it's honestly more capable and complex than I want.

[krigl]

Cheers! Yes...now I remember, CumulusX, thanks Daube. Will try that out soon too...

[jetprop]

What Krigl said => install Aerotow, as well as CumulusX, and enjoy your guided two plane and ridge lifts
Those shots are really excellent, I love the colors and those view angles that you used. You just gave me the will to restart my gliding flights in FSX, thanks !

It's unfortunate timing, all this cool gliding stuff makes me want to glide, but I just bought the Carenado JetPROP so I have to fly that!

I need some other gliders, probably some of Wolfgang Piper's.

[Jayhawk Jake]

I can't seem to get CumulusX! to work right.  It shows a blue box next to the thermal generation.  I'm guessing it may be the weather, anyone know?  I'll play with it some more when I get a chance, but I thought I'd ask incase I missed something

[Daube]

CumulusX should appear as a external window as soon as you launch the sim, when you reach the start menu where you can choose your plane etc... Take a look:




Then, once you launch a flight and reach your cockpit, CumulusX will start to analyze the terrain shape and winds, and generate thermals.

One important remark: if, by switching to windowed mode to see both your sim and the CumulusX little window, you notice that the color boxes next to "ridge lift" etc... are orange or red, then there is a problem: CumulusX cannot connect to your FSX and cannot analyze the terrain.

This happens when one has installed Acceleration directly over a fresh FSX installation. It happend to me, for example. The solution consists in uninstalling Acceleration (from the control panel), download and install the SP1 and SP2 patches for FSX, then uninstall the SP2, and reinstall Acceleration. The SP2 seems to register some stuff that is left there when you uninstall it. I don't know the details, but I had to go through that procedure on two computers (my old one and my new one), and both times CumulusX worked like a charm afterwhile

Of course, prior to install/uninstall anything, I checked that my FTX Central (I have some OrbX sceneries) was set to default FSX, and I also had my list of addons that changed some default textures. For example, after the reinstallation of Acceleration, I had to reinstall my water textures, as well as my lclookup.bgl that replaces the mountain rendering etc... The whole operation took something like an hour or so.

[Jayhawk Jake]

Right, the box pops up, and the Ridge lift shows green, but the Thermal shows a light blue, and I never see the CumulusX clouds indicating thermals

[Daube]

Ah then it works well.
Forget the thermal clouds, if you don't see them you're lucky, because they are not default clouds, they are additionnal, weird-looking clouds that don't look good at all.

What I suggest you is to set a manual-advanced weather. Create a wind layer that goes from the ground up to 10.000 feet, and choose a direction so that the wind will bump into some nearby mountains. Set the wind at least 15 knots. Then take off with the glider, and go down-wind to fly alonside the mountain. You will feel the lift created by CumulusX on the side of the mountain, to simulate the fact that the wind bumps into it, then goes up to get over it.

You'll eventually bump into thermals somewhere