Giving up on Condor 3

[akikaniel]

I started flying gliders in 1968 and till Covid flew extensively in California and in the Sierra mountains.
I am an avid Condor flyer and flew more than 30,000 NM,

Like all of you I was waiting for Condor 3 but unlike you I am disappointed and heading back to Condor 2.

I find it impossible to complete tasks, as ridge lift is virtually non existent and thermals are mostly at mountain tops.

I think that one of Condor's goals is to introduce new flyers to the joy of actual gliding and encourage them to progress to XC. They will not progress to XC if they cannot complete tasks and either crash or land-out.

I appreciate all the effort that went into Condor 3 but it is not fun for me.

[Crakob]

thats a shame. Condor 3 is realy nice especially in VR You, like me too, have to set your mind from ridgemode to thermalmode. Cloudstreets are the new ridges

there is a discussion about that. https://www.condorsoaring.com/forums/vi ... 29&t=22857

[wickid]

There is plenty of ridge lift in Condor3. Last day of the DCG task had a ridgetask with speeds over 200 kph. You just have to set a realistic wind speed. Not 20 kph wind and expect plenty of ridge lift like in Condor2.

https://www.condor.club/comp/showtask/208/?id=25675

[havet865]

There is plenty of ridge lift in Condor3. Last day of the DCG task had a ridgetask with speeds over 200 kph. You just have to set a realistic wind speed. Not 20 kph wind and expect plenty of ridge lift like in Condor2.

https://www.condor.club/comp/showtask/208/?id=25675

Agree... the new task & weather system offers great possibilities and works well.
If you want ridge to work well, just set some wind and forget about the parameters from Condor 2 which were not good compared to real flying.

It can take time to adapt yourself, but don't give up!
Try new settings to find what suits you VS what you want to do/achieve.

[Paul_UK]

As others have said, crank the wind up, turn the thermals down and you should find yourself blasting along your favourite ridges in no time

Still don't get too low though down in valleys, just in case.....

[flydelta]

In C2 I finished many tasks

In C3 just a few

[skaerlund]

I started flying gliders in 1968 and till Covid flew extensively in California and in the Sierra mountains.
I am an avid Condor flyer and flew more than 30,000 NM,

Like all of you I was waiting for Condor 3 but unlike you I am disappointed and heading back to Condor 2.

I find it impossible to complete tasks, as ridge lift is virtually non existent and thermals are mostly at mountain tops.

I think that one of Condor's goals is to introduce new flyers to the joy of actual gliding and encourage them to progress to XC. They will not progress to XC if they cannot complete tasks and either crash or land-out.

I appreciate all the effort that went into Condor 3 but it is not fun for me.

I'm sorry...but that's just a skill issue...

[Vertigo]

no, its not just a skill issue. Its mostly a task setting issue. Skill is not going to get you out of this valley, despite 1800m agl base, high/high/strong thermal activity and 30KmH winds


You will find no useful lift the moment you get below the peaks.

In C2 it was almost impossible to make a task that was not flyable, if you enabled any thermals and/or any wind, you could almost always finish the task using ridges and/or thermals. Im not saying that was realistic, but task setting was definitely easy. Its much harder in C3 to make interesting/realistic but flyable tasks without either setting >3000m base or 50KmH winds. Thermals are indeed highly concentrated on hill and mountain tops, but they also often only start high up, and especially with lower cloud base, there is often very little usable lift under them, if you fall of the peaks or need to cross a valley, you have a problem.

More so since the more realistic ridge lift is often elusive unless you crank the overall wind up to 11, but even then wind shadow can cause valleys to become traps with no usable ridge lift and no reachable thermals. This can be worked around using weather zones, but randomly setting some "typical" or even good weather, will very often still result in a completely impossible task, or at least one where if you ever get just a little low, you are done for.

I hope one day we will get breeze, and this may go a long way to solve the issue, but until then, task setters have to be careful and have their work cut out if they want to make interesting tasks.

btw, for fun I recreated the same conditions in C2. Of course the ridge lift with such wind is ludicrous in C2, as we all remember, so it was almost impossible to get stuck, but you also have thermals start at the mountain base and in the valleys:

Which is pretty rare in C3.

[GlObeThrOttle]

I agree with the OP. I find C3 less interessting having to stay high or busting out. I am not going to argue if it is more realistic or not, but I hardly think you need near storm wind conditions to have ridges work, and then only if you stay above them. Taking a chance on a "low save" is a thing of the past in C3, and only brings frustration, realistic or not.

[NickB]

Condor3 has a new thermal map with 3 parameters instead of the 1 parameter in Condor2.
The two new parameters are 'Convexity' (concave at bottom of valleys and convex at top of mountains) and 'Alpiness' which indicates whether the ground is flat or mountainous.
If you want to fly 'offline', more for enjoyment and not for competition, you could try editing the thermal map to create your own thermal map and remove the Alpiness and Convexity and see if it's more like Condor2. Of course it won't be as realistic as what Condor3 is trying to simulate, and it may not be that simple.
For an on-line competition you'd have to revert the thermal map to use the same one used on the server.
Send me a PM with a link to a TM3 file and I can provide an alternate for testing.

[Geepers]

So spent Thursday and Friday gliding RL.

10 winch launches over the two days for fairly modest airtime. That's real life and real $$'s. Some of those were circuit work but they were difficult days for staying aloft n getting away, especially for a low hours newbie like myself. (Then again the instructors on those days had 6,000 and 11,000 hours respectively and they also struggled at times.) Unfortunately the mountain right next to our airfield doesn't always work even when the wind on the ground indicates that it should.

Just part of gliding in RL - and there doesn't seem to be anyone to complain to about the 'settings'.


In C3 I almost exclusively fly the NZ landscape as that's same as RL. Generally try to match Condor weather to RL (within the limits of the sim). It's amazing how well the Condor skies match what's seen through the RL canopy. And just like in RL it typically doesn't end well to get below the top of a ridge that's out of sun and out of the breeze. Some RL competition pilots here call it 'sticking to the script' - one wing each side of the top of the mountain range equals happiness. And have found it's exactly the same in C3. Stick to the script. (New Zealand has an abundance of knife-edged ridges for that type of flying.) It needs some careful thought to make certain turn points.

Would encourage the Condor team to keep making it as realistic as possible. At least with Condor we can always change the weather settings to make staying aloft a little less challenging.

[Fernlicht]

The devs are making really good choices. I would not like to go back to arcade style flying.
And compared to RL most races taken here in v3 feel like flying in bombastic weather anyways.
But yeah if one makes several poor decisions then outlanding is going to be a realistic option:)

[finalglide]

It does seem like the ridge lift needs a bit of tweaking in C3. Sometimes, I'll have 15kn's wind and no ridge lift, where I really should in real life, then in other cases, the lift will be there. It's not perfect, but it seems pretty close. I don't think this makes it hard to complete tasks though. Every race seems to have most of the pilots complete the tasks, usually their way too easy. I do agree, that if you allow yourself to get in a tough spot, C3 is not forgiving, maybe even unrealistically punishing, but it's pretty easy to avoid that if you plan a bit.

[ryanto]

What I think C3 is lacking is preset weather that we could choose. I have no idea what a "normal" wind is. All I know is that where I fly (flat area), we most have the time have less than 15-20km/h.