TouchingCloud - Microsoft Flight Simulator!

We have started to work on a new feature of Kinetic Assistant and ALBATROSS – Ghost Replay. It is quite a special feature for MSFS – unlike other replay tools, it does affect not your aircraft but insert and animate AI aircraft instead.

First and simplest usage of it – animate the tow plane so it will follow recorded route instead of pulling your glider into the bushes. Please read the latest ALBATROSS version about how to make it work. Leave a comment if you know a better way how it can be used.

Record/play buttons are also available but they are poorly tested, so we not recommend to use them, but you still can try. By any cost don’t use these buttons during competition (recording happens automatically).

Now bad news. We experience various freezes during the competition. In my case I have a slideshow started right after I reach start gates. First thought – something is wrong with ALBATROSS, but step by step it became clear that issue in the game itself – even without any SimConnect programs running and empty Community folder, it is still doing it. It may happen on the first waypoint, or last, so we have not found any clear reason. Let us know if you will find any dependency.

Happy gliding! If MSFS will allow you..

Next update took a little longer than expected, but looks like most issues were finally eliminated. Most important change is the nav screen – now it’s much easier to search for thermals, attach tow rope to near planes or read the wind.

NMEA and XCSoar data export option unlocked, still experimental so feel free to report about issues.

AI towplane behavior improved – now it does not follow North right after take off, and also holds selected airspeed. Some improvements are still in plans but it became usable already, just ensure that you are pointing in the right direction.

If you have a problem with dramatic performance drop – you can decrease data exchange frequency, not a solution but temporary workaround until required optimization steps will be applied.

Check out a new video about glider towing – this one for tow plane pilots, especially the ones that do not have a clue that gliders exist in MSFS 🙂

We are ready for the new gliding competition – Race 250 LSZE!

250 kilometers long task in Swiss Alps a good challenge for the brave glider pilots. 20 knot S-E wind, 25 Celsius degrees ground level temperature and 9 000ft clouds will help you to stay airborne for a long time.

Please update ALBATROSS to the latest version as we are applying changes continuously. In the new version “nav screen” was introduced in its early form, not very fancy but still useful for points rounding or thermals searching.

Next Kinetic update – a lot of changes were applied to artificial thermals, as an attempt to make them closer to real life. New modifiers – weather, time of the day, and most important – wind. Please read the description for more information about how it all works together.

Minor catapult and arrestor improvements. Like a catapult launchbar now holds the aircraft until you initiate launch, in case parking brakes are not able to do that.

Program description now contains both user interface description and usage instructions, please check it out in case you are missing some feature (on the website or inside of the PDF included in the archive).

As Kinetic Assistant is now part of the ALBATROSS competitions app, some future updates may contain features that will be used in competitions only, but stay tuned anyway – thermals and towing improvements still planned.

Happy weekends everyone! We have prepared the next gliding competition for you – Race 125 LFNJ. Location – South-East France, LFTM – LFNJ. Task length – 125km, duration – about a hour. Start gate open from today until 2021-02-22 12:00:00 UTC.

Variable S-E wind will help you to stay in the air by following east and south side hills, but also strong thermals can be found near to each turn point to you out.

Please notice that thermals leaning implemented in current ALBATROSS version (btw don’t forget to get update or results will be not counted), so you will experience a small shift of the thermals to the west direction. Thermals drifting is disabled during competition to ensure that all players will have thermals at the same spots.

Our last weekend task Race 350 EDKG available again, it is the hard one so be sure you have enough time and patient to finish it.

We are still in testing stage of ALBATROSS development process so feel free to report about any issues you will find, or wishes you can have. No glider class limits at this time, use anything you like, just don’t forget to kill the engine. Good luck!

Today we are ready to announce a new Competitions application for MSFS – ALBATROSS! It is fully integrated with Kinetic Assistant and provides all required functionality to create, participate and analyze different kinds of competitions. We are focused on Gliding contests so this will be our first event.

We have prepared two gliding tasks for you, and are proposing to participate in small competitions. Program in early testing stage, so it will be more testing rather than a sports event, but still a good reason to enjoy soaring in MSFS.

​Tasks will be opened from today for testing, so no time will be sent to the server after completion. You can get yourself familiar with the route, or just wait for tomorrow.

14.02.2021 at noon (UTC) the start gate will be opened, and available for 24 hours. So everyone will be able to participate at the most suitable time.

Basic parameters of the starting gate: 5000m elevation (above ground), 500m radius
Parameters of turnpoints and finish: elevation not limited, 500m radius

Program has some basic safe checks – like you have to turn the engine off, or don’t use winch/tow after you passed starting gates, or your result will be reset. Program in the early testing stage, so feel free to report about any issues.

We can use different servers for now (later some way to connect pilots will be added), but maybe we could agree to use a single one – West Europe, so we will see as many people as possible.

So, have fun, tomorrow at 12pm (12:00) UTC starting gates will be opened, and you can race as many times you want.

Small tutorial and download link: https://touching.cloud/how-to-use/

Some important fixes were added into Kinetic Assistant.

No need to press the KK7 import button after each launch now, its state will be saved. Major hotspots data reading issue fixed, as often points was clipped by coordinates grid, this should not happen now. To avoid overload by points, filtering was applied, so strong hotspots will stay away from others to make it more natural.

Now it is possible to export KK7 data into Userpoints (CSV) and load it into LittleNavMap.

What next? We are going to implement some weather modifiers to the thermals, even if weather reading is very limited for the SimConnect but some workarounds exist. Also another hotspots API will be added to make coverage even better.