1. Introduction
Cross-Country Soaring 98 is designed especially for the flight simulation enthusiast interested in soaring flight. Traditionally, flight simulations have focused on powered aircraft, while soaring aircraft have been virtually ignored. Cross-Country Soaring 98 takes advantage of Microsoft Flight Simulator 98's excellent flight simulation and BAO's Flight Shop's Adventure Programming Language in order to simulate soaring flight like never before. Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 and Microsoft's Flight Shop Converter 98 are required for the use of Cross-Country Soaring 98.
The Cross-Country Soaring 98 adventure program creates realistic soaring conditions and simulates realistic cross-country and competition flying, complete with flight task choices, navigational functions, turnpoint photographs, and task performance analysis during flight and upon landing out or crossing goal. The fundamental principle of soaring flight is to find rising air and climb in it. In Cross-Country Soaring 98, this rising air is in the common form of thermals. These thermals are randomly placed and vary randomly from one another in size, strength, and duration.
Once you've become skilled at finding and climbing in thermals, you
may want to test your skills by flying a course of significant length.
You can choose your own straight-line or dogleg (two-leg) task. Learn
the rules of competition and hone your skills to
achieve maximum course distance and speed. Currently the flight area
is roughly a circle with a radius of about 90 miles centered a little north
of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. This gives
a "soarable" area of over 12,000 square miles. Also, there are four
airports in this area that can be declared as goals or turnpoints
and for which navigational functions exist, but you can, of course, fly
anywhere in the area that you choose. These four waypoints allow
16 unique flight tasks per starting position, and since you can start the
adventure from anywhere you choose, an infinite number of unique tasks
exist. Starting from the center of this "soarable" area (the flight
included with Cross-Country Soaring 98 puts you there), tasks
of lengths varying from 13 to 119 miles may be chosen. Any aircraft
can be flown in this adventure (but FS98 won't allow you to change
aircraft mid-adventure).
