Score
0
Best
-
One button: hold to fly straight, release to circle. Read your own trail to find the rising air and climb.
A glider has no engine, so the only way up is to find rising air and turn tight circles inside it. There is a single control: hold anywhere to fly straight and let go to keep circling. The thermal itself is never drawn. You are given the climb rate on the right and the trail behind you, painted green where you were rising and red where you were sinking. The side of your circle that comes out green is the side the core is on, so straighten for a moment while heading that way and the whole circle shifts across onto the better air. Each thermal dies after a while and another rises somewhere else, so you have to leave and search, and the air in between is sinking. As the day goes on the thermals get narrower, live shorter and stand further apart, so every flight ends on the ground eventually. Your score is the highest altitude you reach.
Everything in this game comes down to one question: which side of your circle is the rising air on? You are never told, and the only evidence is the trail you have already flown. Green behind you on the north side of your circle and red on the south side means the core is north, and the correction is to hold the button briefly while you are pointed north. Do that and the entire circle walks northward onto the better air.
The mistake almost everyone makes is circling wherever they happened to enter the lift. It feels productive because the variometer flickers positive on part of every turn, but a circle that sits half in and half out of a thermal averages out to almost nothing. Measured over hundreds of flights, a pilot who never corrects reaches about a hundred and forty metres and is on the ground inside two minutes. A pilot who nudges toward the better air reaches a hundred and eighty. A pilot who always turns toward the core climbs to nearly four hundred metres and stays airborne for ten minutes. That is almost three times the height for the same air.
Correct in small doses. Holding straight for a long stretch takes you out of the lift entirely and the sink outside is relentless, so a short hold and another look at the trail beats one confident dash. If your correction was right the next circle will be greener all the way round; if it was wrong you will see it immediately and can put it back.
Know when to leave. Every thermal dies, and once the vario has been negative all the way round a turn you are circling in nothing and simply burning height. That is the moment to fly straight and search. Search costs altitude, which is exactly why arriving high matters: height is the only currency you have for finding the next one.
Lastly, remember that the day works against you. Later thermals are narrower, so your circle has to be better centred to catch them at all; they die sooner, so you get fewer turns in each; and they stand further apart, so each crossing costs more. A flight that felt comfortable at two hundred metres will feel desperate at four hundred, and that is the game telling you it is nearly over.