A few thoughts reflecting only my own opinion and experiences:

Soaring Flight Simulator (http://www.sfspc.de/index_e.htm)

For its price the graphics are now a little (arguably a lot!) dated, but
the flight models remain good and the lift modelling (at least as far as
ridge and thermal lift is concerned) is excellent. Great for practising
centring techniques on thermals, obviously within the limitations of the
fact that it is a simulation so you don't quite get that same seat of
the pants feel.

Good simulation of both winch-launching and aerotow, complete with the
occasional cable break to keep you on your toes. Nice range of glider
types available. Biggest downside is that you only get to fly in Germany
(which is fine, if you're German, I suppose, but I'd prefer something
more local to me!).

Don't really know if SFSpc is at all useful for practising your
navigation, in that I've never been to the location it recreates. But if
you want to know why not to barrel roll a Ka8 or Immelman your ASH25
then the simulation does have its uses. Does a much better job of
stalling and spinning than Microsoft Flight Simulator.

MS Flight Simulator.

Personally, I brought this (in my case, FS2004) because it was going
cheap on eBay. I had no intention of flying gliders in it, mainly
because (up until the last time I checked at the time I considered this)
the only way of launching a glider was to "slew" it to the launch height
(for the uninitiated read that as being as "realistic" as just "starting
in the air").

Worse, the only sort of lift available was pre-designed static scenery
lift (ie. Thermals and/or ridge pre-positioned by a scenery
designer/builder prior to the flight, thus always in the same place
whenever you flew over that area again).

Finally, although the weather modelling is superb, it is detached from
the lift, so your thermals aren't marked out by puffy white clouds.

That said, FS2004 comes to life with the various addons available. With
a decent (LOD9) terrain mesh, photographic landscape scenery and
customised replacement autogen FS2004 does a superb job of visually
recreating any given area of the planet. The very least you need is the
enhanced terrain mesh, but the photographic scenery really does complete
the illusion if you can get it.

If you want an example (this one is UK based), visit the Visual Flight
site
(http://www.visualflight.co.uk) go to the forums hosted there and look
for the photographic scenery screen shots. More specifically, the
following is one somebody posted of a virtual flight out over Snowdonia
in Wales:

http://www.visualflight.co.uk/forums...?TOPIC_ID=3072

Many of the various freeware glider models available for download are
equipped with "VET" which, whilst it doesn't entirely replace the
winch-launch (and still isn't a patch on SFSpc) it does give a fairly
convincing recreation of one. Somebody already mentioned
http://www.virtualsoaring.org - that's an excellent place to look for
gliding related FS information and downloads.

A dynamic lift generator has also been developed as a freeware addon
(it's called Cross Country Soaring, and you'll find a link to it on the
virtualsoaring.org site, I expect). A definite improvement over the old
static scenery lift, you still don't get Cu capping the thermals,
however, as nobody has yet cracked how to do that. And the thermal
modelling doesn't feel as authentic as the modelling in SFSpc. But that
might be me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I haven't actually
loaded up my copy of SFSpc for a while, I've been too busy soaring
around in FS2004

The Cross Country Soaring addon is also supposed to do a good job of
recreating hill/ridge lift when set up right, though I haven't go around
to playing with this yet.

The glider flight models in FS2004 are not all that bad, I suppose,
though with my limited RL experience (about 15 hours solo in a Ka8, so
very limited!) I'm not one to judge. The biggest failing in FS2004 is in
the simulation of stalls and spins (or almost total lack thereof).

If I were to compare the two, I'd have to say that the flight models,
launch simulation and lift modelling in SFSpc are far superior to FS2004
despite its age. But graphics are all, and along with the weather
modelling, a decent mesh and photographic scenery, Microsoft produce a
simulator that I'm sure has some merit as an aid to practising you
navigation .

Though again, my limited RL experience means that I can only say this
authoritatively insofar as I know what the ground within a 10nm diameter
of Aston Down looks like from about 4000', and so I know this, at least,
is fairly well recreated in my copy of FS2004.

And its the being able to launch from Aston Down and explore a very
convincing replica of my own local countryside that keeps me hooked on
FS2004 and relegates my copy of SFSpc to shelf-ware.

A final note. I tried the Sailors of the Sky demo a good while back,
when trying to decide between it and SFSpc. Didn't get on with it at
all, so went with SFSpc. But others swear by it, so I wouldn't presume
to dissuade anybody from trying it and making up their own mind. Both
SotS and SFSpc have demos available for downloading from the Internet,
so both are well worth investigating.


--
Bill Gribble
http://www.scapegoatsanon.demon.co.uk