For the past couple of months I have been developing a turbulence addon for XP12. There are several available, notably X-ProTurb, which was released as I was developing my own turbulence addon. My addon includes a feature I hope you will appreciate for realism in XP12. On airfield plates you will often see references to ground features creating turbulence - buildings, hangers, woods, hedgerows etc. My local airfield has a row of hangars south of the east/west runway, with a large wood to the south of that. With a southerly wind those ground features create turbulence on final approach and take off. In a northerly wind there will be no turbulence from those features.

I scan a 12Km square around the aircraft (updated as you fly) and download data from OpenStreetMap. For every ground feature I measure the size, shape and height and use that data to calculate the added turbulence an aircraft will experience on the downwind side. Left and right wings will experience differing impact from the turbulence depending on your distance, height and track offset from the feature - the turbulence will feel different central to the feature as opposed to the edges. If there are several features then the turbulence is adjusted to allow for all of them. If, like me, you will be downloading SimHeaven Pro when released, every ground feature you see in the sim will create its own turbulence. If you are flying at an offset angle to the ground feature, your left or right wing will get affected at different times.

Slopes are calculated upwind and downwind of the aircraft to get accurate wind flow across slopes. Lift and descent will be created by these slopes. If your approach is on the downwind side of ground features, and the wind is rising or descending due to a slope, then you will feel all of the effects.

Release is fairly close - if you have a suggestion you would like to see in my addon please let me know and I'll investigate. It will be called ProAtmoshereXP because future development will include a realistic atmosphere for glider pilots. Mountain waves, rotors, thermals and clear air turbulence will be developed after the initial release.

Edited July 25Jul 25 by MrBitstFlyer

Really looking fwd for that release !!! 🤩

Looking forward to trying this out in windshear conditions.

What tempts me even more in this upcoming update is all the attention the author has given to "Soaring Weather", namely the convective and orographic effects.

I've never been satisfied with the way X-Plane models thermals by default.

10 hours ago, Brian Mackie said:

Looking forward to trying this out in windshear conditions.

Windshear, severe enough to require a go-around, is something I have spent quite a while investigating.

This sounds very interseting.

I am going to admit defeat with this project, especially as X-Proturb was released and actively being developed. I would not be happy releasing something I didn't feel was realistic, and the biggest problem I was having was with thermals. I had some really nice effects, especially ground features affecting the aircraft - if an airfield plate mentioned turbulence off of buildings, trees or terrain, my addon would inject those forces and the aircraft roll and pitch would be affected. I went as far as measuring the shape, width and height of every ground feature on Open Street Map (as these ground features are in SimHeaven). This aspect of my addon is working really well.

However, after spending many months on the gliding aspect of the atmosphere, I have parked this addon - I am using X-ProTurb for now, maybe revisiting my attempt in the future when my batteries are recharged.

However, see my other post for something else I have been working on.

@MrBitstFlyer ,

I understand your decision, and although I regret that you couldn't continue with this interesting project that might bring believable thermal lift to X-Plane 12, I think it is better to wait for a better way of accessing the internal variables and modulate the various effects they are used for in terms of weather simulation, maybe with the next version of X-Plane (?)

I wouldn't be able to test it anyway since I completely abandoned flight simulation, although I keep polling this forums and am eager to read about nice and promising news for users of the various platforms!

Keep the good work with your other project !!!

Edited August 24Aug 24 by jcomm

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

I completely abandoned flight simulation

So you joined me at just one year distance or so.

9 hours ago, Murmur said:

So you joined me at just one year distance or so.

The Club will grow :-)

I was almost there, and that desktop crash made the change... It's so good to find time to do stuff at home I didn't find time to, and actually go flying for real a lot more than I used to 😍

If not for other reasons wife's happy too for the significant reduction in the electricity bill ....

Edited August 25Aug 25 by jcomm

Meanwhile, others still involved may waste power reading about how jcomm and others have ceased to take part. But, sincerely, have fun doing other things, and thank you for your many interesting contributions.

@MrBitstFlyer Oh too bad. I was very excited about what you announced so far. But I perfectly understand. Perhaps there is a way to work with X-turb‘s author and implement in future your ground-effects generated by the buildings? I was very curious about that aspect, since it can be very important when flying irl too (and also forests).

4 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

@MrBitstFlyer Oh too bad. I was very excited about what you announced so far. But I perfectly understand. Perhaps there is a way to work with X-turb‘s author and implement in future your ground-effects generated by the buildings? I was very curious about that aspect, since it can be very important when flying irl too (and also forests).

I did approach the Author of X-ProTurb to see if the extra realism of ground effects in my addon would benefit his product. He did make a valid point that my effort scans OpenStreetMap to get the dimensions and shape of all ground features, but not everybody uses SimHeaven, thus would get turbulence where no ground feature exists in their XP12. He was also concerned about the FPS impact, but my sim was running fine, with my ProAtmosphere addon using approx 1 fps.

I do expect to return and finish ProAtmosphere without the gliding aspects (although orographic lift is working great). I am 95 percent a GA flyer in XP12 so the airport environment was very important to me. Watch this space after I finish AutoTrees!

6 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

but not everybody uses SimHeaven, thus would get turbulence where no ground feature exists in their XP12

This makes sense of course. Perhaps it is something that could be something that could be implemented later into the new default-autogen (if any is planned for the next-gen scenery). Or perhaps Laminar themselves could be interested in your work 🙂

10 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

This makes sense of course. Perhaps it is something that could be something that could be implemented later into the new default-autogen (if any is planned for the next-gen scenery). Or perhaps Laminar themselves could be interested in your work 🙂

They were not interested in AutoHaze 🙂