Sitting snug in the small cockpit of my glider, waiting for the winch launch to get on the way, I look to the right of me and see some tall yellow grass next to the runway waving in the soft breeze that is blowing from the west.
It's 10:30 am in the morning and the first wisps of cumulus clouds are forming. That means thermal activity, cause every book on the topic of weather will tell you that a cumulus cloud is always being formed by a thermal underneath it. I'm getting excited. Seems like a good day for soaring!
I again look to the left and notice some summer flowers in between the grasses. Then I feel the wing of my glider lift and I see that person X is holding my wing up. Time for some action! A gust of wind makes the grass wiggle a bit more frantic. Better be ready for some turbulence and sudden wind gusts while going up, I say to myself.
Then the winch cable tightens up and off I go. The first few 100 feet I look to the side and watch how I slowly stop seeing details in the grassy patches next to the runway. When they turn into a more or less uniform blur I know I can do a 360 in case of a cable break emergency. Steadily I climb to 1200 ft and at that point I pull the yellow knob in front of me (my hand was on it all the time... just in case) and I release the winch cable. Nose down? Check! Speed? Check! Wind breakes locked? Check! gear up? No, wait for it.... check! Ok, now I'm off for some soaring adventures!
Wouldn't this be great? At this moment the scenery looks beautiful from a distance, but up close it's flat and featureless. Trees make up for it a little, but I do hope that Ipacs will implement some kind of detailed ground textures or better jet, 3D grass, grain, bushes, etc. Don't forget sheep, cows and the odd horse. I imagine that these close up features will only be rendered when up close (say a few 100 ft max) so they wont take up computing power when they are to far away to be viewed in any kind of detail anyway. This would make flying close to the ground in gliders (ridge soarin) or helicopters so much more immersive. At this point when close to the ground I always loose the feeling of being in a close to real environment. This feeling I do have when higher up in the sky.
Ipacs: is this idea at all on the to do list? If so, what to expect?