Touching Cloud

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.

Kinetic Assistant 0.8 is out! Main changes — UI improvements, some bugs fixed and missing features added, and most important — thermals import from https://thermal.kk7.ch/ available now. No need to deal with CSV files. Just check their map for coverage, find suitable location, start the flight in MSFS and press the KK7 button on Thermals tab. To see thermals in LNM — you can export them as CSV and load by Userpoints > import section.

thermal.kk7 is freeware project, so if you like it – they have donation button in the Feedback section!

We have worked hard to bring the Kinetic Assistant to the new level, and partially succeed. Unfortunately, current API and MSFS limitations does not allow Kinetic to fully control AI aircraft, but we have reached some acceptable level of towing by AI.

Two modes available — immediate take off, which can be used anywhere, and taxiing together with a tow plane. Both are quite limited so please read the description carefully. We are going to improve AI behavior but that will take some time to find proper ways to do it. At the moment, towing by live pilot is preferable and strongly recommended to try at least once!

Rope calculation improved as well so you will have better experience now both with winch and towing.

Several issues fixed: compatibility with CJ4 mod and thermals CSV files reading error.

Check out our latest videos for additional information: