User Guide - Version Notes

Cross-Country Soaring 2004

User Guide

2. Version Notes

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 4.0, released January 14, 2006, includes significant enhancements and a few bug fixes to CCS 2004, Ver. 3.2:

Enhancements:

A new program (called CCS Control Panel, Ver. 1.0) was written to manage all CCS settings (formerly only managed by manually editing ccs.ini). The format of ccs.ini underwent a major overhaul as part of this new development. It is no longer necessary (but still possible) to manually edit ccs.ini in order to change CCS settings.
The process of creating a multi-player data file (ccs-multi.dat) was modified to optionally simultaneously create an input file for Peter Luerken’s “CUMULUS!” program. Compiling this file with CUMULUS! will create a scenery file containing 3-D, dynamic cumulus clouds that match the positions and timings of the CCS thermals in ccs-multi.dat. CCS can optionally launch CUMULUS! (to compile this file for you) and place the file in an FS scenery folder for you.
A capability was added to perform an automated glider performance test in order to determine a glider’s minimum sink, best glide, and polar coefficients.
A capability was added to create some random, chaotic “texture” in the air. This is controlled by the new “Air Texture Intensity” setting.
The ability to check online for program updates was added (as part of the new Control Panel).
Certain Flight Simulator on-screen messages are now available (optionally) in French or Spanish.
The user can now increase or decrease slope lift strength and/or height. This change was made to, for example, allow the user to customize slope soaring conditions when CCS’ calculations don’t accurately represent reality. The amounts of slope lift strength or height increase or decrease are controlled by new "Slope Lift Strength Scalar" and "Slope Lift Height Scalar" settings.
A "Thermal Sink Scalar" setting was added. This allows the user to scale the strength of the sink around the edges of thermals by applying this number as a multiplier. The allowable range of values is 0.0-3.0.
The default global slope lift strength and height were also increased in this version (strength by 20% and height by 10%). This is a direct result of user feedback that CCS slope lift strength and height (as found in version 3.0 and later) were generally a little lower than in reality.
The range of fluctuation in strength from thermal to thermal was increased. Previously, thermal strengths varied up to +/-20% of the day's average. Now they vary +/-40%.
CCS' "multi-player" mode was renamed "scripted" mode, as many users have come to use "multi-player" mode for flying alone (not in a multi-player session). "Scripted" is more accurate, as the primary distinction of this mode is that the thermal positions, strengths, timings, etc. are "scripted" like words in a play. Likewise, ccs-multi.dat was renamed script.dat.
The upper limit of the thermal lean factor was increased from 1.5 to 3.0.
A setup program was built for CCS and the CCS Control Panel.
CCS is now able to check for software updates on the web, making it easy to stay up-to-date with all the latest enhancements.
You can now choose what to name and where to place the slope data file produced during a topo scan. Previously, this file was always named "ccs-slope.dat" and was placed in the CCS "Import" folder.
A new program file, "local.dat", was created. This file is similar in function to ccs.ini but stores settings that would rarely be shared with another user (e.g., the path to your CUMULUS! program executable or your language preference).
House thermal names can now contain spaces.

Bug Fixes:

This bug affected single-player flight. Slope lift/sink was not present if (1) widespread sink was disabled (set to 0) and (2) the glider was not in a thermal. This bug had probably existed since version 3.0.
If the glider was in lift or sink at the time CCS was exited, this lift or sink continued for 10-15 seconds after exit.
This bug fix relates to flying in multi-player mode using a multi-player data file (ccs-multi.dat) containing any thermals with durations longer than 20 minutes. Any thermal with a designed duration longer than 20 minutes would be abruptly terminated 20 minutes into its life. This would cause the thermal durations and coverage to be lower than intended by the ccs-multi.dat creator. When flying with (Thermiek) BGL clouds, this would also cause the average success rate of finding lift under the BGL clouds to be lower than the expected/designed 50%. The longer the thermal durations in ccs-multi.dat, the greater these negative effects. This bug was introduced in version 3.2.
This bug fix relates to flying in multi-player mode. Occasionally (estimated 10% of the time) a thermal would accidentally “inherit” the longitude (and all other attributes except latitude) of another nearby thermal. This could cause a couple of problems. The most noticeable problem is that it could cause “blue thermals” (i.e., thermals not topped by clouds) when using a multi-player file designed not to contain any blue thermals. It could also cause thermals to occasionally abruptly change position. This bug only affected “invisible” thermals (those not “seen” with CCS’ cheat keys). This bug had probably existed since the first multi-player capable release (version 2.0).
If CCS was started in multi-player mode with the FS time before 10:00 AM or after 6:00 PM, CCS would hang and would possibly cause a system crash. This bug had probably existed since the first multi-player capable release (version 2.0).
This bug only affected multi-player data file creation using no PRJ file as an input. Thermal coverage was calculated as if thermal durations were an average of 15 minutes, regardless of the user-defined duration setting. For example, if the user chose an average thermal duration of 30 minutes (e.g., a range of 20-40 minutes), the script file would contain twice as many thermals as intended by the "Thermal Coverage" setting.
This bug fix relates to the "Thermal Lean Factor" setting and the creation of a multi-player data file. The bug caused the wrong value to be written to ccs-multi.dat, if the desired setting (as set in ccs.ini when ccs-multi.dat was created) was 1.0 or greater. CCS would, in this case, mistakenly divide the desired value by 10. For example, if ccs.ini's setting was 1.20, the value written to ccs-multi.dat would be 0.120. The minimum allowable value is 0.30, so this would lead to a CCS error message upon starting CCS in multi-player mode using this file. CCS would still run but would convert this invalid value to 0.70, which was lower than (more lean than) the value desired by the multi-player file creator.
CCS was corrected to give the intended "large area" warning if the user accidentally transposes the N and S lats for script file creation (without the use of a Thermiek project file input) or a topo scan.

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 3.2, released May 14, 2005, includes only a single enhancement to CCS 2004, Ver. 3.1:

Enhancement:

In Ver. 3.1, thermals were given a random duration in the 10-20 minute range. Durations were selected in a purely random distribution, such that any duration in the 10-20 minute range was equally likely for a given thermal. Ver. 3.2 gives you the ability to define the possible range of thermal durations and expands the possible range to 10-45 minutes. The distribution of randomly selected durations within the defined range was also changed. The distribution is now in a standard "bell curve" shape, causing there to be more thermals with durations near the middle of the range than near an edge.

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 3.1, released March 5, 2005, includes only a single bug fix to CCS 2004, Ver. 3.0:

Bug Fix:

In Ver. 3.0, a slope data file covering an area that crosses the Prime Meridian (0° longitude) would not be imported if placed in the “Import” folder. CCS would give the usual success message as if the file imported normally, but the file was actually not imported. It was simply copied to the “Archive” folder. The only change in Ver. 3.1 was to fix this bug.

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 3.0, released January 17, 2005, includes significant changes to CCS 2004, Ver. 2.0:

Additional/Enhanced Functionality:

The most significant change in Ver. 3.0 is that the ability was added to create areas in which ridge lift will automatically, naturally be created on the upwind sides of hills and mountains. Likewise, sink is formed downwind of these terrain features.
Another significant change is that scenery (BGL) lift can now be used in conjunction with CCS lift/sink, even when the BGL and CCS lift/sink occupy the same space. In Ver. 2.0, any CCS lift/sink masked out (overrode) any BGL lift/sink. Now CCS can be used, for example, with BGL wave or conversion lift.
An inversion layer, or aloft layer in which thermal strength is diminished, was created. The user can disable this layer or can customize its altitude, thickness, and strength.
Thermal strength can be set to gradually diminish in the lowest X feet AGL, where X is user-definable. This will make “low saves” less likely, which is more realistic.
The variation of sizes among thermals was changed. In Ver. 2.0, a bell curve distribution was used, which caused very few thermals of the smallest or largest sizes and most thermals of the average size. A linear distribution is now used that causes there to be twice as many thermals of the smallest size as those of the largest size. In simple terms, there are now more small thermals than large ones, which is more like reality.
Thermal distribution in single-player mode was improved. In Ver. 2.0, if a thermal expired, its replacement was created at least as far away from you as the new thermal’s radius. In Ver. 3.0, the new thermal doesn’t have this placement restriction, unless you’re currently in another thermal. This should reduce the frustrating frequency of circling in a dying thermal at low altitude and finding its replacement thermal too far away to reach.
The maximum possible lift strength created when two thermals overlap was reduced from 140% of the day’s average strength to 120%. This should reduce the occurrence of “super thermals”, excessively strong lift caused by overlapping thermals.
Widespread sink strength can now be auto-calculated when creating a multi-player data file.
The limitation was lifted that limited the size of a multi-player data file being created to 10,000 records. There is now no limit, other than perhaps what your hardware will allow.
The precision of the “Thermal Lean Factor” was decreased from 0.001 to 0.01, as a difference of less than 0.01 is insignificant.

Bug Fixes:

In Ver. 2.0, if you were flying a straight line (like on glide for a task turnpoint), fewer thermals would be placed directly on your course line than at any given distance off your course line. This made the thermal coverage experienced while flying a straight line well below the average thermal coverage for the flight. Code was added to approximate whether or not you’re flying a straight line and use that guess to evenly distribute thermals even when flying a straight line.
In Ver. 2.0, the thermal lean amount was not properly reflecting the widespread sink strength. The result was that as widespread sink strength increased, thermals stood too straight. The stronger the sink, the more this error.
In Ver. 2.0, in multi-player mode, the thermal lean factor found in ccs.ini, instead of ccs-multi.dat, was being used during the first minute of program run.
A bug was fixed that might have caused the program to crash (cause a Windows error) when flying in a house thermal, if only one or two house thermals were defined in ccs.ini.
A bug was fixed that would have caused a thermal, in single-player mode, to lean at a fixed amount and heading as you climbed in it, even if wind conditions changed (e.g., stronger and different direction) as you climbed. The fixed lean amount and heading would have reflected the wind conditions at your position (including altitude) when you entered the thermal.
A minor error was fixed that caused the thermal lean factor written to ccs-multi.dat to possibly be 0.01 different from the lean factor set in ccs.ini during ccs-multi.dat creation.

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 2.0, released October 30, 2004, includes significant changes to CCS 2004, Ver. 1.0:

Additional/Enhanced Functionality:

Multi-player capability was added.
Widespread light sink was added. The user can choose one of the following options:

disabled – no widespread sink
automatic – CCS calculates the sink strength (default)
user-defined sink strength

Thermal coverage (# per 100 mi.²) was made user-definable.
“Cheat key” function was made user-definable, with the following options available:

disabled
enabled except when in the lifting part of the cheat key thermal
enabled always (default)

The percentage of thermals that are “invisible” (can’t be seen with the “cheat keys”) was increased almost threefold. (This, of course, decreased the percentage of “visible” thermals.) The overall effect will be that you’ll accidentally (as opposed to using the cheat keys) find more thermals than before.
Thermals were "stood up" a little straighter in wind. In Ver. 1.0 they leaned downwind a little too far. The ability to control the relationship of lean angle to thermal strength (and wind speed, indirectly) was added, too, so advanced, real pilot users can experiment and find the most realistic amount of lean.
Each thermal’s strength was made to gradually increase from 0 to 100% during the first two minutes of its "life".
The combined lift strength of two overlapping thermals was limited to 140% of the day’s average thermal’s peak strength. Before, the only limit was the sum of the two thermal strengths. This lets an overlapping condition potentially cause a little stronger lift than any single thermal the same day but should avoid the occasional thermal (two overlapped, actually) that gives double (or better) the climb rate of any thermal you found earlier in the flight.
The program now outputs "Don't expect much lift this high." if a cheat key is pressed when above the ceiling of the cheat key thermal. In normal situations, this message will never be seen. It was added as a troubleshooting measure.
CCS now exits automatically, if FS is exited.
If ccs.ini doesn't exist, then the program now outputs a message that it is using all default settings. If ccs.ini doesn't exist, now CCS will set the day's lift strength within the default range. With Ver. 1.0, the strength would be zero, if ccs.ini didn't exist.
Cheat keys (except for house thermals) will now output "I don't see it...", if the subject thermal is more than 10 miles away. This message should only be seen when using a very low thermal coverage or just outside the (multi-player mode) ccs-multi.dat-defined "soarable" period.

Bug Fixes:

Thermal positions (as reported by the “cheat keys”) were mis-reported in the first 30 sec. or so of flight.
A fix was added to properly handle turning the clock backwards when in single-player mode. If you start CCS in single-player mode and then set the time backwards, thermals active before the time change may no longer be active. In Ver. 1.0, this behavior was wrong in that the pre-change thermals would exist till their prescribed stop times, which were assigned when the thermals were created. This means you could set the clock back an hour and effectively add an hour of life to each current thermal. Of course, this wasn't even a big problem in 1.0, because if you flew 3-5 miles in any direction, this would "refresh" CCS and get it back on track (making new, 10-20 minute duration thermals).
House thermal N+1 was being given the name of house thermal N. House thermal #1 was being given no name at all.
A bug was fixed that was setting the lift ceiling to the base altitude of ANY type (not just cumulus, as intended) cloud layer below 20,000' MSL (the lowest cloud layer only, of course).

Cross-Country Soaring 2004, Ver. 1.0, released September 2, 2004, is the third version of this program and follows Cross-Country Soaring 98, released in 1998. Here are the most significant changes made in this major re-write of the program:

General Changes:

This version is designed for use with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. It has not been tested with other versions of FS.
The “soarable” area was expanded from a few hundred square miles (several hundred square kilometers) in the San Francisco, California area to the whole planet.
The user was given the ability to customize certain key parameters of the simulation. These allow you to create the exact soaring conditions you want. Customize the simulation to make it as easy or as challenging as you like.

add up to three “house” thermals at fixed positions
set the lift “ceiling” (where the air stops rising)

to cloudbase altitude – by setting cloudbase altitude in FS
to a specific value or range of allowable values for flights in clear skies

set the thermal strength
set the thermal diameter

The program can be used in conjunction with static lift scenery (i.e., *.BGL file) elements (thermals, ridge lift, etc.). Thus, you can use CCS to randomly place thermals in a scenery area you developed with static thermals or ridge lift. Coupling CCS with ridge lift is probably the most interesting scenario. You can set the winds such that your ridge is creating lift and can then soar the ridge lift until a CCS random thermal comes along within glide.
No CCS scenery files (i.e., *.BGL files) exist. This eliminates the need to install additional scenery files or to remove any of the default lift-including scenery files included with FS.
The “look for lift” “cheat” keys now output bearing in magnetic (compass) degrees, eliminating the need to remember the local magnetic variation and do on-the-fly calculations in order to fly straight to the lift.
The program was totally rewritten: from a BAO Flight Shop “Adventure” program to a stand-alone program working in conjunction with Pete Dowson’s FSUIPC interface.
Turning on surface winds will no longer produce unrealistic areas of widespread rising air.

Improved Thermal Modeling:

There is now sinking air around thermals as in reality. This is a realism enhancement made possible by FSUIPC.
Lift transitions were made much more precise/smooth. In CCS 98, the minimum change in the air’s vertical speed was ~200 fpm, which made for quite a jolt each time you went through a transition (entering/exiting lift, getting nearer the thermal core, etc.). FSUIPC allows CCS 2004 much finer control of the air’s vertical speed, so these jolts are essentially eliminated.
Thermal tops were “smoothed”. In CCS 98, if you climbed to the top of a thermal, you would experience a sudden loss of lift and would soon descend back into the thermal, where you’d experience a sudden addition of lift. This “popcorn popper” experience would continue until the thermal expired, or you left the thermal. In CCS 2004, the lift strength gradually decreases to zero in the top few hundred feet of the thermal, eliminating this odd behavior.
Thermal expirations were “smoothed”. In CCS 98, you might be in strong lift and then pitch violently as the lift just “vanishes”. That was the thermal “expiring”. In CCS 2004, thermals expire gradually, eliminating any such abrupt jolts.
Time-of-day thermal strength modeling was improved. In CCS 98, there were three discreet global strength values throughout the day: zero, off-peak, and peak. In CCS 2004, there is a smooth transition between zero and the peak value. This provides the realistic waxing of lift in the morning and waning in the evening, instead of abrupt increases (from zero to off-peak and off-peak to peak) in the morning and decreases in the late afternoon.
Lift may now be found in clear (i.e., no clouds) skies. In reality, skies are occasionally clear on soaring days.
In CCS 98, there was a bug that caused fewer thermals to be placed upwind than downwind. The program was placing the thermal BASES perfectly randomly (upwind, downwind, or crosswind), but the leaning of the thermals with the wind caused there to be more thermals (at your altitude) downwind than upwind. This made upwind flight even more difficult than it is in reality. In CCS 2004, there are the same number of thermals (on average) at your altitude upwind as downwind.
When flying a more or less straight line for several miles in CCS 98, the chance of finding a thermal ahead was lower than the chance of finding one behind. This was corrected in CCS 2004 so that the average thermal abundance is the same ahead of you as behind you.
Lift may now be found all the way to the ground. In CCS 98 there was never lift below 150’ AGL. While gliders rarely climb back up from below 150’ AGL, lift is occasionally found this low. Usually this lift is simply a nuisance that makes the landing approach more difficult, but it is more realistic for there to be lift all the way to the ground.

Functionality in CCS 98 but not included in CCS 2004 (in order to focus more on the realism of the soaring conditions):

Variometer (vertical speed indicator) Audio: Some of the gliders available for use with FS 2004 have variometer (vario) audio, so if you want vario audio, use one of those gliders. See the links page on this web site for links to some sites with these gliders.
Automatic Weather Generation: It’s my understanding that FS 2004 has pretty good weather dynamics, so I’ll leave it alone. Also, this frees you to set initial conditions as you like instead of being forced to take weather conditions CCS gives you.
Flight Task Operations: There are other tools (see the links page on this web site) for setting up (add-on programs) and navigating (e.g., GPS receivers) flight tasks, so I’ve left that work to those existing tools.
Weather Report: A simple text weather report may be added to a future version but is not included in the initial CCS 2004 release.

Cross-Country Soaring 98 is the second version of CCS and followed Version 1.0, released in July 1997. Here are the changes that were made in CCS 98:

This version is designed for use with Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 (instead of FS 5.1). The adventure file included with Cross-Country Soaring 98 has been converted for use with MSFS 98 and hasn't been tested with earlier versions.
A dedicated web site has been set up for Cross-Country Soaring 98.
The User Guide is in HTML format.
No aircraft are distributed with this version. I've decided to leave glider production up to others in order to focus more on thermal scenery and adventure programming.
Four more scenery files were added, giving a four to five times increase in the size of the "soarable" area.
The adventure program was cleaned up a bit, eliminating pauses in vario audio and speeding up some calculations.
Each scenery file, SOARSFC*.BGL, was reduced in size to only 217 bytes.

Table of Contents