Hello all,When flying in daytime, I often spot these large green coils or springs every 50 miles or so. They project from the ground all the way up to the sky and are at least a few miles in diameter. Does anyone know what these are and how I can get rid of them?Thanks

Hirgab,Those are the "schematic" representations of THERMALS in FSX... you'll need to see them for glider flights but you can turn them on or off if you don't want to fool with them.Turn on/off in the Weather tab of your Settings dialog windows. Also helpful to read the manual... (ie Learning Center ) for the fundamentals.Loyd

You can also set them to "Natural", in which case the green coils will be replaced with eagles circling on the thermal. I like the look of that mode.

As others have noted, they are meant to represent thermal updrafts, although they are not totally realistic in the way they do so, since thermals are rarely that kind of diameter. It is often necessary to fly a very tight turn in a glider to stay in a thermal in reality. The FSX developers had to add those green coils because the real way you tend to locate thermals - by either looking for likely thermal sources on the ground and then tracking downwind from them, or looking for cumulus cloud streeting downwind of a source, is not depicted in FS. The thermals in FSX are generated without any real relation to the terrain, nor with the clouds representing their presence either. Therefore, the only slightly realistic setting in FS, is to choose the 'natural' depiction, which shows birds circling in the thermals, and that genuinely is something glider pilots often look out for.Occasionally it happens the other way around too in real life, where a bird will see you circling in a glider and going up in a thermal, so will come over to join you. I've had that happen a few times and it's really quite a magical experience, especially if you hold your turn in formation with the bird, where you can see it steering with its feathers at very close proximity, as that is something you are otherwise unlikely to ever see.If you want more realistic thermals in FS incidentally, you can do a search for a program called 'Cumulus X' which will add not only thermals, but also the telltale cumulus that often appears at the top of the thermal as the water vapour in the thermal cools down and condenses into a cloud. Active Sky Evolution will also add thermals, but the method by which it does so is not the best.The only truly realistic depiction of thermals in a flight sim, is in the gliding simulator 'Silent Wings' which has additional data on the terrain maps which are used to calculate thermal activity based on the position of the sun and the ambient temperature settings in the sim. It then kicks off realistic thermals and generates clouds from them too. Another glider flight sim - Condor - also has a fairly good stab at thermals, but not quite so realistically as Silent Wings.As unrealistic as the thermals are in FSX, they are still a big improvement over FS9, which does not feature them at all, unless specifically programmed in an add-on 'adventure'.Al

Chock -I must disagree with this statement.......quoteAs unrealistic as the thermals are in FSX, they are still a big improvement over FS9, which does not feature them at allend quotePerhaps we are speaking about apples and oranges here but if you add the following line to the FS9.cfg file under the [sCENERY] label, you will see the default thermals which are in FS2004.ShowTriggers=1See Tips and Tricks for FS2004 - Issue Number 25.

That's true, but as far as I am aware, in FS9 they are only present on flights which were specifically designed for the default FS9 glider, of which there aren't too many. That's why I put 'unless specifically programmed in an add-on 'adventure'' in the previous post, which is immediately after the bit you quoted.Al

The FS9 thermals are hard coded parts of the scenery (ie they are part of a scenery .bgl file) so they appear no matter the type of aircraft. There are two areas in the default FS9 setup that have thermals and they are Chelan (thermals) and Morton WA (ridgelifts). I know this because there are examples given in the FS9 BGLCOMP SDK for these areas. FSX thermals can be hard coded (using the same syntax as for FS9) and in addition there are the thermals that the original poster is talking about as well as those that appear in the FSX glider missions. I'm not sure but I think the weather theme you select may affect the number of thermals that appear in free flight.Here is the code describing the FS9 thermals at Chelan which are also included in FSX (FSX/Scenery/NAMW/SCenery/Chelan.bgl is the file).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd" > <!-- Thermal Chelan -->  <SceneryObject lat="47 48.35" lon="-120 1.83" alt="200" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="SPARSE">  <Trigger type="WEATHER" triggerHeight="3000">   <Vertex biasX="-1500.0" biasZ="-1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="-1500.0" biasZ="1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1500.0" biasZ="1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1500.0" biasZ="-1500.0" />   <TriggerWeatherData type="THERMAL"></TriggerWeatherData>  </Trigger>  </SceneryObject>     <!-- Thermal Waterville-->  <SceneryObject lat="47 39.24" lon="-120 3.32" alt="1000" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="SPARSE">  <Trigger type="WEATHER" triggerHeight="3000">   <Vertex biasX="-1500.0" biasZ="-1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="-1500.0" biasZ="1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1500.0" biasZ="1500.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1500.0" biasZ="-1500.0" />   <TriggerWeatherData type="THERMAL"></TriggerWeatherData>  </Trigger>  </SceneryObject>    <!-- Thermal KEAT-->  <SceneryObject lat="47 23.91" lon="-120 12.40" alt="1000" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="SPARSE">  <Trigger type="WEATHER" triggerHeight="4000">   <Vertex biasX="-1800.0" biasZ="-1800.0" />   <Vertex biasX="-1800.0" biasZ="1800.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1800.0" biasZ="1800.0" />   <Vertex biasX="1800.0" biasZ="-1800.0" />   <TriggerWeatherData type="THERMAL"></TriggerWeatherData>  </Trigger>  </SceneryObject></FSData>

Cumulus X not only adds random theremals, based on terrain, and sun position, but it also adds rdige lift, to mountains. allowing you to fly along the edge of a mountain range, with lift on winward side and a drop on the other. It has come along way. All this based on terrain, wind speed and direction and sun position.http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showforum=230

Speaking of thermals in FSX, does anyone know how to just disable the stock FSX thermals but still keep winds aloft active. There is a tick box but its linked to winds aloft and thermals so I dont want to tick it. Sometimes I dont use RW weather via FSX or ASA and there are some thermals in front of KPHX runway 26 and one at the beginning of one of the south facing KDAL runways. Both of them annoy the heck out of me and I would like to disable it. I was thinking that there might be a thermals bgl somewhere I could either rename or remove to get rid of them.