P3D v4 Cumulus X in P3D v4

[caleb1 27]

I have downloaded Cumulus X and installed it into P3D v4.2.  If I start a flight without it connected it is fine, but when I connect Cumulus X to the sim, it quickly reloads the flight, and places me somewhere probably about 10 - 20 miles from where I was before.  After that it will quickly (it takes about 1/2 to 1 second to load) go though the flight loading process and repeat every 20 seconds or so, nothing changing when it completes.  I know Cumulus X is not officially compatible with P3D, but I have never (that I can remember) had an FSX only addon not work in P3D.  I'm wondering if this is because I am trying to use it in P3D or if this is just something wrong on my end.  Has anyone else tried Cumulus X in P3D?  If so, does it work?

 

Thanks in advance.

[glider1 90]

CumulusX works really well in 4.2 still the best gliding addon around for any sim other than Condor. I have logged many hours with it under P3D 3 and 4. The developer is still contactable but he doesn't support P3D we have to "do it ourselves" with the help of the club at UKVGA.

The problem you describe is an installation problem.

Straight out of the manual page 31:

Sudden jump of aircraft to different location:
This occurs when the visual models of the thermal clouds were not installed correctly, e.g.
under influence of user access control (UAC). Open the distribution archive, navigate to
SimObjects\Misc“ and copy the folder „CumulusXClouds“ into the directory
„<FSXROOT>\SimObjects\Misc“.

The only thing broken with CumulusX if installed correctly is there is no way I have found to change the default speed of the towplane and CumulusX complains when you close it.

If you do get it going, consider using AS2016 with manual weather changing stratus clouds to cumulus clouds were necessary (because stratus clouds kill all the cumulusX lift under them), and record your flights with Simlogger which works really well in P3D. Once your gliding has improved, challenge yourself against recordings of real world pilots available at OLC onlinecontest.org and strongly suggest joining the online gliding club UKVGA. If you aren't gliding in virtual reality, download the amazing range of gliders for free at Wolfgang's website. If you are in virtual reality, the Aerosoft DiscusK is P3Dv4 compatible and the DiscusX and ASK21 can be made to work and are amazing in VR.

[caleb1 27]

10 hours ago, glider1 said:

because stratus clouds kill all the cumulusX lift under them

Thanks for the reply.  Doing what page 31 in the manual said fixed the problem.  Thanks again.  Does the above quote about stratus clouds only apply to things when using AS16 or even when not using a weather addon?  Also, do you know if using REX SkyForce interferes with cumulus X (as I use this instead of AS16)?

 

Thanks

[glider1 90]

12 hours ago, caleb1 said:

Thanks for the reply.  Doing what page 31 in the manual said fixed the problem.  Thanks again.  Does the above quote about stratus clouds only apply to things when using AS16 or even when not using a weather addon?  Also, do you know if using REX SkyForce interferes with cumulus X (as I use this instead of AS16)?

 

Thanks

Hi Caleb no probs thanks for helping me over at the A2A forums when I stupidly suggested adding the random age option for A2A aircraft when the feature already existed!

CumulusX reads the clouds present in the simulator almost exactly so that if a weather engine (any weather engine) decides on putting a patch of cumulo here and some stratus over there, CuX will put simulated thermals where the cumulo cloud is and put absolutely none where the stratus is. Sometimes there is a bit of overlap. Point is that as soon as you fly close to or under those stratus, expect there to be no lift at all. This is unrealistic. In real life there is still patchy lift unless it is a really comprehensive stratus situation. Similarly, if the weather engine injects any showers, CuX reads this as a 100% kill of thermal lift unfortunately. It is possible to fix the stratus/showers problem somewhat by adding in weather engine thermals so that there is still weather engine injected lifts as well as CuX lift, but the accuracy of those is way way lower than CuX thermals but at least it is possible to do cross country that way and it still challenging and fun. What I do when designing a gliding task to fly, is to download AS2016 weather then switch it to manual and change any stratus cloud to cumulo and turn off precipation too making no other changes. That works well. It is not that bad though! In real life, pilots do want to fly on non-raining stratus free days too!

Unfortunately in some respects we have gone backwards with AS2016 not forwards. In previous versions there was a tick box option in the weather engine "depict stratus as cumulus" which was great for gliding but it made all the tube flyers unhappy because cumulo is more performance heavy than stratus coming into the big airports. In AS2016 they improved performance by preferring to depict stratus whenever the weather conditions are ambiguous. As for skyforce, I asked one of the top simulator glider pilots around what he thought. He wasn't sure but thinks that no matter how many different types of clouds the weather engine knows about, the simulator itself doesn't, and so neither will CumulusX. I haven't personally tried skyforce myself but it would be interesting. It will certainly work with CuX, but stratus is stratus as far as CuX is concerned.

We have petioned hard for Hifi to include proper thermal depiction in their next weather engine. They responded positively and said it "is on their to-do list". Fingers crossed. We also badly need wave lift simulation like Condor has so that gliders can soar above cloud tops at FL24 and higher.

Cheers

[caleb1 27]

Thanks for the reply @glider1

 

I see what you are saying.  I would have never guessed you were the same person on the A2A Forums.  

If I were to make any recommendation, it would be to not buy SkyForce if you are planning on that.  It has a lot of missed features that REX claims to be included in "weather force" (like smooth transitions of weather instead of abrupt changes) but weather force will probably quite expensive and my recommendation to you would be if you have active sky, stay with it.  If I could get a refund for SkyForce I would buy Active Sky.  Let't not make this a thread about SkyForce vs. Active Sky though!  

 

Caleb

[caleb1 27]

I downloaded the free version of Cumulus X and am using it in P3D v4.  When flying along a mountainside near Valdez, Alaska, United States, (does the location matter much?) I don't get much ridge lift.  I tried this using the "Fair Weather" preset on the weather page in P3D.  I can click the "Disable Lift" and "Enable Lift" buttons in Cumulus X while flying and I see some change, so I know Cumulus X is connected and working properly, but there is not a significant amount of lift.  Does anyone know of there is a certain way that I need to configure the weather in P3D in order for this to generate enough lift?  Am I doing it wrong or skipping a step?

 

Thanks.

[glider1 90]

Anyway well done on getting CumulusX working. Pity it is not "officially" supported but unofficially it is fine. It is one of the most stable reliable apps I own in P3D. You don't need to run the DLL. The exe standalone version works fine. The DLL version is legacy.

Fingers crossed that Active Sky people are working on building the same quality or better into there weather engine. The performance cost is very small these days and they could include an option to turn off advanced updraft simulation if they wanted to.

[caleb1 27]

8 hours ago, glider1 said:

Anyway well done on getting CumulusX working.

It's not 100% working yet.  Do you have any ideas on this?  (Please post any replies at the link below)

 

 

Edited April 30, 2018 by cmpbellsjc
Removed link to merged topic

[glider1 90]

Hi Caleb. You won't get much ridge lift unless there is wind blowing directly onto the ridge so that when it hits the mountain, it rises. That is what gives you the lift. The fair weather preset is for thermalling and it only has a light breeze. You can modify the preset to add a wind layer blowing onto the slope. Add 20 knots at 3/4 the height of the ridge at angle that blows onto the slope as close as possible. That should do it.

Just as in real life, even if the wind is not blowing onto the slope directly, if there is any wind around, deviations in the shape of the ridge can produce small pockets of lift and ridges will also produce more thermals than on the ground if the angle of the sun is onto the slope (think solar panel).

There is a lot into it. Enjoy learning the intricacies.

By the way, the free version has things missing like turbulence effects so it is a cut down experience.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

8 hours ago, caleb1 said:

It's not 100% working yet.  Do you have any ideas on this?  (Please post any replies at the link below)

 

 

Caleb, I merged the new topic you started into this thread. Please don’t keep opening topics on the same subject and stick to one thread. Makes it easier for people to help you in one topic rather than multiple.

[caleb1 27]

5 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Caleb, I merged the new topic you started into this thread. Please don’t keep opening topics on the same subject and stick to one thread. Makes it easier for people to help you in one topic rather than multiple.

Ok, thanks.  I thought the fact that it was not generating much lift was different from it jumping to another location, so that is why I opened a new thread.  But I guess it would be ok to keep them in the same topic if they are similar.

[caleb1 27]

16 hours ago, glider1 said:

Hi Caleb. You won't get much ridge lift unless there is wind blowing directly onto the ridge so that when it hits the mountain, it rises. That is what gives you the lift. The fair weather preset is for thermalling and it only has a light breeze. You can modify the preset to add a wind layer blowing onto the slope. Add 20 knots at 3/4 the height of the ridge at angle that blows onto the slope as close as possible. That should do it.

Just as in real life, even if the wind is not blowing onto the slope directly, if there is any wind around, deviations in the shape of the ridge can produce small pockets of lift and ridges will also produce more thermals than on the ground if the angle of the sun is onto the slope (think solar panel).

There is a lot into it. Enjoy learning the intricacies.

By the way, the free version has things missing like turbulence effects so it is a cut down experience.

Thanks for the reply.

Weather settings:

Clouds: none

Temperature: 60 F

Wind: 20 knots (no gusts) blowing close to perpendicular to (and towards) the mountainside (not 100% perpendicular)

Other settings:

Time of day: 1:50 PM

Location: Valdez, Alaska

It worked!  I have ridge lift.  I thought I had done that before, but maybe the winds were not fast enough.  Anyway, thanks for the help.  I will decaffeinate look into the licensed version of Cumulus X in the future if I start doing more gliding.  One other question: would you know if Cumulus X has wave lift?

 

Thanks

[glider1 90]

Hi Caleb good one glad you got it working. CumulusX doesn't do wave lift. We tried hard to convince the developer to do it. He started work on it but never finished. Modelling wave lift is difficult especially since you have to have a pilot to test the model that has experience with wave lift. Not just wave lift, but dealing with ATC at that flight level and needing oxygen etc. We also tried suggesting it with Active Sky but not sure if they will give it a go. Condor sim does it. Realistically though, the CumulusX covers 95% of all gliding you would ever want to do and it does it very well. Strongly suggest buying the app to support it. It is cheap for what it does and there is always a possibility that we will never see a proper weather simulation for gliders other than it because the tube flyers don't need it.

 

[mrrcflying 8]

Can anyone help me with how to install CumulusX to P3D V4.2?  I have looked all over and don't seem to find how to install it.  The installer just closes.  I suspect it is because it is for FSX.  Is there a manual method to install it on P3D?

[glider1 90]

Yes it can be installed manually. It is just an external app that installs a couple of folders into official locations in the sim, one for the app and another for the clouds.

Did you download it officially from here: http://www.luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/

1. Run the installer as administrator. It is just a command line program so it disappears for a while then comes back
2. When it says it can't find fsx, click yes you do want to install it somewhere else
3. Install it into a dummy location say for example c:\fsx_dummy
4. When it says it can't find exe.dll and DLL.dll say no you do not want to create one
5. At the end you will find in your dummy location, a simobjects and a module folder
6. You now either make an official addon.xml file and install it as a P3D app or
7. You simply copy the files and folders into your P3D installation manually because there is no difference between FSX and P3D folder structure

Other things to keep in mind:

• There really are only two folders to copy, the modules/cumulusX! folder and the CumulusXcloud folder which you put into simobjects/misc.
• You don't need the DLL at all.
• CumulusX is standalone but for the cloud folder. 
• Run cumulusX application by making a shortcut of it where ever you want (suggest running at as admin but I don't think it matters?).
• You can launch CumulusX before the sim starts or after. It doesn't matter.
• If you get strange movement of your plane every few seconds, it will because you didn't put the cumulusXcloud folder into the correct spot.
• If it is working, the CumulusX app will be connected to the sim and will show "GREEN" indicators for both thermal and ridge lift
• Remember that the unregistered version doesn't have extra features such as turbulence effects.
• The towplane speed and flap angles can't be customised because CumulusX tries to write them to an fsx.cfg file that doesn't exist.

It would be great if someone wrote an addon.xml for CumulusX in P3Dv4 because it is just begging to be installed that way.