How does FSX determine where to put thermals? Is it just random, or is there some logic to it?Does anyone know how to add some thermals to terrain? I know you can add them in missions, but I'd like to add them to the "free flight" terrain.

According to the glider tutorial they should in theory be in the right places, over fields etc. According to that also you should be able to look for birds circling in the thermals, not seen that yet but I will look occasionally, when I fly FSX anyway. Right now I'm halfway through re-installing FS9.

I think the birds got dropped from the final version...I've never seen them. And thermals seem to be very limited. I get NO thermals at all in my home state of Tennessee...I was trying to re-create a real glider flight I had, but no thermals.I'm sure it'll only be a short while before someone figures out how to add them in.

You can add them with the SDK that comes with the Deluxe Version, and it is not too difficult to do from what I have read of the SDK documentation so far. In fact this is one of the prime reasons I bought the more expensive version of FSX (although I usually do that anyway with FS versions). Somewhat frustratingly, I've been too busy with other work in the past few days to investigate further on this, but intend to do so now I have a few days to spare. One thing I was kind of hoping for, was that they would be generated with downloaded weather, but I don't think this is the case, which seems a shame, as then it really would be as real as it gets, however, I don't know for sure if this is the case until I check it out, I have my doubts though :-(For me, thermal implementation is the stand-out feature of FSX (and not simply because I fly gliders in the real world). I think it adds tremendous realism to the flight of all aircraft in the sim.I for one intend to litter the sky with thermals via the SDK whatever the truth turns out to be, so if you're looking for them, watch this space :-)

EXCELLENT!!!!I tried creating a "mission" with thermals, but I didn't know you could add them to the stock terrain.Now, the REAL question is, can you add ridge lift to the stock terrain...

Hey just found a file in the main directory that might be "tweakable" it's ThermalDescriptions.xml...anyone have a clue what it means? It looks like there are autogen entries. Maybe thermals are treated as an autogen object? Too bad I know absolutely nothing about FSX structure.Maybe one of you smart guys can do something with this... :)