NZFF

Photoreal scenery is great to glide over, here's Coromandel and RealNZ Auckland.
We are privileged to have great FS scenery around the Hauraki Gulf

Sweet shots mate What are you flying? Looks like a Duo Discus or an ASH-25

Thanks! Yes ASH-25 from Wolfgang Piper.
All gliding needs are catered for at Wolfgang's Home Page
I have an AI gliders project half-finished somewhere, using the Duo Discus models.

Sweet! I had a lot of his models a long time ago, but lost them all during a re-install... If you're into soaring though, check out the stand-alone simulator for it called Condor Awesome physics engine and attention to detail in the gliders themselves and to the air you're flying in. Shame the ground textures arent too flash.

Yah I tried it , scenery was a problem you're right.
'Course Flight Unlimited had a really good glider setup, loved the sound the towrope made when you accidently broke it...

Great pics- have you been able to set up the 'create-your-own-thermal' trick with ActiveSky? If so, how does it work?

Don't have Active Sky!
But - There's always Francisco Augusto Vargas Carneiro's thermals - he's done just about every glidable spot on the planet
I confess I'm strictly a downhill glider, at 58:1 glide ratio and 80kts, by the time it gets down from 3,000 ft, I'm done!

I'm running AS6 and have never been able to get the thermals to work properly with it... Downloaded a freeware program called Thermik ( from memory, its long gone now) took a long time to set it up as it needed to "scan" the mesh that you had in FS in order for it to figure out where it could create ridge lift and wave. The other downside was that the clouds that formed on top of any thermals looked like a cross between a ninja star and a donut






You'll have to excuse the scenery in these shots, they were from my first install of FS9 - long before I discovered scenery addons
Omarama to Mt Cook in wave, from a 3000' "release"

More on gliding at Simnewz.com
The Duo Discus comes with VET macro which allows a simulated winch launch ("Simulated" Hmm - in a flight simulator??)
Zooms you up, you can set the release height, gives a nice thunk when towrope is released

At abovementioned website, there is also CSS which does thermals, looks interesting.