• Shame. I also hope they do it eventually.

    As much as I love Condor Soaring, once you see Aerofly's landscapes it's hard to go back... With such a good engine it'd be a crying shame if the focus was purely on airliners.

    Another nice touch would be to make the mccready vario fully functional. Being able to set climb, and switch between mc and vario. Just saying :)

  • Yes but the switch for that speed/vario is on the stick yet. That would need to be added to the 3D model, that's always quite a chain of changes as well. Glider towing and a winch have been on my whishlist for quite some time. When we have the ground work done for ground or vehicle interactions with the aircraft that it's probably easy to add the towing plane or winch back in.

  • Honestly, Thermals need to be addressed too. Thermals are impossible to find, and impossible to keep once found. Ofcourse Condor is leading in the industry, and I don't know how difficult it is to make glider dynamics that good. But it would be 'very nice' if it were that quality!

  • Thermals and especially thermals under cumulus clouds. Yes that would be awesome. But I think we'll need to wait for the big weather update for that. Imagine thermalling up in front of a rain shower. Then suddenly you hear thounder and it actually scares you... (Not like the thunder and lightning in FSX where you get annoyed by the constant flashes, that's not scary, just annoying) - no I want to actually be scared by the rain front coming to me and the insanely turbulent updrafts in front of it. Then few drops on the canopy... you keep on climbing up to the ceiling where you have to pull the brakes so that you don't fly into the cloud..... Then you managed to escape the shower to the side and fly around it only to be greeted by a rainbow and a constant soft but strong sink :D Stuff that I experienced about three times now in real life, that was so much fun :D
    .... but yeah cumulus thermals for now would be great!

  • Thermals and especially thermals under cumulus clouds. Yes that would be awesome. But I think we'll need to wait for the big weather update for that. Imagine thermalling up in front of a rain shower. Then suddenly you hear thounder and it actually scares you... (Not like the thunder and lightning in FSX where you get annoyed by the constant flashes, that's not scary, just annoying) - no I want to actually be scared by the rain front coming to me and the insanely turbulent updrafts in front of it. Then few drops on the canopy... you keep on climbing up to the ceiling where you have to pull the brakes so that you don't fly into the cloud..... Then you managed to escape the shower to the side and fly around it only to be greeted by a rainbow and a constant soft but strong sink :D Stuff that I experienced about three times now in real life, that was so much fun :D
    .... but yeah cumulus thermals for now would be great!

    There's no flying like glider flying...

  • I flew for about half an hour in 0 kts wind conditions and 3/4 thermal strenght. Here are my finding:

    - Thermals differ in strength. I had 1,5 m/s thermals till 6+ m/s thermals.
    - Thermals seemingly have a short life cycle. I can fly pretty tight and even circles in the glider in FS2, but every thermal I caught died out on me after just a few minutes.
    - Thermals have sink around the edges and the highest lift in the centre, which makes them easy to centre using real life thermal centring techniques.
    - Strong thermals have strong sink around the edges.
    - Good centring techniques are essential for using thermals in FS 2 right now since the die out within a few minutes.
    - Thermals are few and far between even using settings that would suggest good thermal flight conditions. In a good half a hour flying I found 5 thermals and I think a stayed in them for around 10 to 15 minutes. This means that I flew for 20 minutes or more without encountering a single thermals. This doesn't seem like good thermal conditions to me.

    I will fly around in the same type of weather to see if the results I'm getting are consistent.

  • Hi, yeah that's fits my observations, too. The thermals right now are way to far apart and they die out too quickly. Even for experienced glider pilot's this is too hard, there is almost no assurance that you can stay airborne, on a day like that I would not want to leave the airport vicinity in real life.
    Maybe we can tweek the life time and thermal density, that would be a start for now.

    Regards,
    Jan

  • Hi Jan,

    That seems like a good starting point. If the thermals have a longer life cycle and if they are more frequent then flying cross country would be very doable. It seems to me that this is only a minor tweak and would be of great help for the FS 2 glider community.

    Greets,

    René

  • I took a glider up for the first time yesterday. I blame MrRCSound. It was reading his posts that got me thinking about it. It had been a very long time since I had thought about gliders. My Dad died in 2010. He was a soaring fanatic.

    The first time Dad dragged me along to fly in a glider in real life, I was home on leave from the military. My first thought about the flight was, "I'd feel a lot better about this if I could hear an engine running." Dad loved aviation, but once he got into gliders, that was it. All he wanted was gliders after that.

    Anyway, yesterday in Aerofly FS 2 I managed to stay up there for about 45 minutes before I headed for an airport about 10 or 12 miles away and landed. I was able to find thermals and stay with them, more or less, and it was fun. I spent quite awhile off the approach end at the airport where I landed, bleeding speed until it wanted to stop flying enough to bring it back down to the ground.

    So, since I'm getting into this sort of thing, yeah, a tow plane would be very nice. I'm kind of liking the soaring. I may have to try some soaring in Switzerland today.

  • I took a glider up for the first time yesterday. I blame MrRCSound. It was reading his posts that got me thinking about it. It had been a very long time since I had thought about gliders. My Dad died in 2010. He was a soaring fanatic.

    The first time Dad dragged me along to fly in a glider in real life, I was home on leave from the military. My first thought about the flight was, "I'd feel a lot better about this if I could hear an engine running." Dad loved aviation, but once he got into gliders, that was it. All he wanted was gliders after that.

    Anyway, yesterday in Aerofly FS 2 I managed to stay up there for about 45 minutes before I headed for an airport about 10 or 12 miles away and landed. I was able to find thermals and stay with them, more or less, and it was fun. I spent quite awhile off the approach end at the airport where I landed, bleeding speed until it wanted to stop flying enough to bring it back down to the ground.

    So, since I'm getting into this sort of thing, yeah, a tow plane would be very nice. I'm kind of liking the soaring. I may have to try some soaring in Switzerland today.

    Have you ever heard of Harris Hill NY? They bill it as the soaring capital of the US. Not sure if that is true now, but it used to be. I flew gliders up there for a while, might get back into it at some point. Anyway, I did about the same thing yesterday. I started out at 3700 over Harris Hill, which is equivalent to a 2000' tow. Had thermals set on high, and was able to center a couple of them pretty well. Topped out at 5200'. Flew over Elmira, and out to Watkins Glen. Decided to put down at the football field of Watkins High School. Touched down just after the track, and stopped it well short of the other edge of the track. Probably 75 yards, well within the football field. Kind of impressed with myself. LOL

    We need that tow though, it would make it so much better.

    Andrew

  • Which and tow plane both need some core changes to add vehicles so I don't think that could happen before Christmas, sorry. (Unless anyone from the dev-team is better informed about this?)

    Oh well... I was hoping. You and the Dev team keep up the great work. You have a fantastic product here, a few more changes and it will be perfect. :)

    Andrew

  • Have you ever heard of Harris Hill NY? They bill it as the soaring capital of the US. Not sure if that is true now, but it used to be. I flew gliders up there for a while, might get back into it at some point. Anyway, I did about the same thing yesterday. I started out at 3700 over Harris Hill, which is equivalent to a 2000' tow. Had thermals set on high, and was able to center a couple of them pretty well. Topped out at 5200'. Flew over Elmira, and out to Watkins Glen. Decided to put down at the football field of Watkins High School. Touched down just after the track, and stopped it well short of the other edge of the track. Probably 75 yards, well within the football field. Kind of impressed with myself. LOL

    We need that tow though, it would make it so much better.

    Andrew

    Yes, indeed! I was born in Elmira and have flown out of Harris Hill. I've spent a lot of time around Watkins Glen, especially up at the race track, but around town as well. I'm very familiar with the whole area, Chemung, Steuben, Schuyler, Tompkins, and Yates counties, and Keuka, Seneca, and Cayuga lakes.

  • Yes, indeed! I was born in Elmira and have flown out of Harris Hill. I've spent a lot of time around Watkins Glen, especially up at the race track, but around town as well. I'm very familiar with the whole area, Chemung, Steuben, Schuyler, Tompkins, and Yates counties, and Keuka, Seneca, and Cayuga lakes.

    That is so cool! What are the chances of running into a (former?) local on such a small board. I live in Corning, I am sure you know it as well. Shoot me a PM when you get a chance.

    Squeaky wheel gets oiled first. Tow plane? Hahaha... OK, I will stop bugging now.

    Andrew

  • I'm not really a glider person, but I must admit Monterey seemed to scream for me to switch to a glider......

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • About 30 years ago I used to fly hang gliders, a few times at Harris Hill, but mostly at Hammondsport and Dansville with the Finger Lakes Association of Pilots (FLAP)

    Back when I was young and invincible.

    I generated some scenery for Dansville and you can still the the launch clearing I helped to brush out on the ridge.

    It sure brought back some memories.

    Totally enjoying the ASG29

    i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz | ASUS Z170-A | 16Gb DDR4 | Samsung SSD 950 PRO NVME M.2 256GB | Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti on GP102-A GPU | Oculus CV1 | Windows 10

  • About 30 years ago I used to fly hang gliders, a few times at Harris Hill, but mostly at Hammondsport and Dansville with the Finger Lakes Association of Pilots (FLAP)

    Back when I was young and invincible.

    I generated some scenery for Dansville and you can still the the launch clearing I helped to brush out on the ridge.

    It sure brought back some memories.

    Totally enjoying the ASG29

    Very cool! I know both of those areas. Last I heard Dansville airport was not operating too much. Not sure about the hang gliding though. I don't mind being seated in a glider, but hanging from a wing takes larger nuggets than I have. LOL

    Andrew