Having been a fan of soaring as a result of playing the Condor simulator, i was delighted to find out that FSX was going to include thermals as well. Well, in fact it does include thermals, albeit in a rather simplistic way.. it's fun to glide from thermal to thermal and keeping yourself aloft sans engine.I noticed however that ridge lift still isn't included in the regular sceneries. There are 2 missions which have it modeled, but that's it. My question is: would it be possible to model it so it's there anywhere where there are mountains? It would be cool if it would be anywhere where you'd expect it i.r.l... that's what i love so much about Condor, and i'm sure it would open up a whole new experience for FSX users as well.

I kind of noticed this myself... I don't have much soaring experience but I have noticed a lack of ridge lift anywhere except for those two missions you have in mind. My thought is that conditions need to be ideal for it... although I'm assuming you know that there should be ridge lift where there isnt, because I don't have enough experience to know that. There are thermals at any time in the game though... I just dont know about ridge lift. By the way, when I go to select the option to make thermals visible, Schematic works fine (the red/orange/green sprials) but what is Natural supposed to look like? All I can tell is it kills my frame rates but thats about it.

Well in reality you would see clouds forming over thermals. As long as the clouds are still over the thermal, they will grow. When they get away from the thermal, they will start dissipating. This will be your indication that there's colder, dropping air underneath them, so you would have to avoid clouds that look like they're dissolving.In condor this is simulated to great effect.. i don't think they modelled thermals that extensively in FSX though.. you just get those 'tubes' of rising air you can fly into.I've read somewhere that the natural way they depict thermals in FSX is by birds circling around. I have yet to see this myself though.

The FSX SimConnect SDK can create thermals dynamically, so maybe ActiveSky for FSX will create thermals based on landclass and terrain?