Some questions: Thermals

[Daube]

Hi all,

The gliding experience has finally been implemented in FS, many many year after the first Schweizer glide was included in FS 5... or whas it 4 ? Anyway, gliding in FSX is just cool and I completely love it.

My question is about the thermal visualisation: there are three choices: none, natural and schematic.
None and Schematic are clear to me, no problems.
Natural is quite obscure, I could not understand what it was, nothing appears, nothing happens, excepted a little drop in the frame rates  :-?

So basically, what does this "natural" visualisation look like ?

[Katahu]

I'm guessing this is what it realy means.

None - Absolutely no thermals.
Natural - Thermals are there, but you can't see them.
Schematic - Thermals are there and you CAN see them.

[Daube]

In fact the option concerns only the visualisation I guess, since even when I choose "none", the thermal I was soaring is still there...

[beausol]

If you go into the help section, it will tell you that the "Natural" option for thermal visualization is birds circling in the thermal.  That's hard to spot, though.

[Daube]

Birds ? Really ?
I tried to trigger this visuallisation while I was at Sion, could see a lot of thermals in schematic mode, but no birds in natural mode ?

[Daube]

UP !
Has anybody ever saw those birds in thermals ? I would really be curious to see what they look like.
I have explored the thermals around Sion for hours without seeing anything

[pepper_airborne]

i have been looking for those animals too for hours, havent found them. Maby has something too do with scenery settings.

[Daube]

Almost all my scenery settings are maxed out, excepted the texture resolution that is limited to 1m only, and the scenery shadows. Special animations are maxed out. And even though, if because of any settings those animals would not be displayed, why would I get 7 FPS less than with schematic visualization ?  :-?
This is really strange...

[pepper_airborne]

Maby it is a bug or something, because obviously the computer is calculating something when the setting is changed.

[justpassingthrough]

I think I remember reading somewhere that GA traffic controls birds and you must also be in the right season and area too. Try raising GA Traffic to 80-90% (as a test) and go into Yellowstone National Park or Grand Teton in the spring. The advanced animations must be checked as well. As long as other sliders are up they should appear.


There is also something to be said for overtaxing. FSX does do a bit of analysis so if it is busy rendering and does not have enough resources it may trim back on the animals.  Not sure. I will email NickN and ask him.

[justpassingthrough]

[quote]Almost all my scenery settings are maxed out, excepted the texture resolution that is limited to 1m only, and the scenery shadows. Special animations are maxed out. And even though, if because of any settings those animals would not be displayed, why would I get 7 FPS less than with schematic visualization ?

[Daube]

That explains everything. I have installed reduced autogen + reduced autogen textures, this is why the birds are handled by my CPU, but the textures doesn't show up...  
Oh well, I can live without those birds for now. I will be glad to discover them with my next hardware upgrade  8-)