Following on from the recent major update to Microsoft Flight Simulator, including a world update for USA, and from a recent Q&A on Twitch, the Microsoft Development Team have posted another edition of their regular updates,
Firstly, they have announced a partnership with Honeycomb Aeronautical, the popular simulator hardware designers and producers. The video they posted is featured below.
The release of the recent update does not mean the development team relax. They still have work to do according to their roadmaps, bug reports and wish lists. Screenshots of these feature below.
Other things to note from the updates include, fixing Simconnect in relation to AI aircraft and objects, and continually improving the stability of the whole simulator but specifically in the areas of Project, Scenery, and Aircraft Editors. Third party updates announce another 27 airports have been released since last weeks development update, which means there is now a total of 380 third party airports available for the new simulator.
Finally they announce that they have had conversations with FlyByWire and Working Title, and are impressed by their work. They hope to engage more with these third party developers. They also mentioned some feedback regarding an airport gateway system. This is something they are looking into and will formulate a plan to start in 2021.
SDK Update
- DevMode:
- Throughout this week, the DevMode team has been actively focused on the last fixes for Update 7. We hope you will enjoy the results -> check-out the SDK Release Notes!
- On the Scenery Editor, the Heightmap Editor is nearly finished. We are also working on providing an editable hierarchy for object instances, which was one of the top requested features in terms of scenery editing.
- The new Visual Effects are now coming to production, even though we still have work to do on process optimization. We’re also adding new SimVars, which is needed to condition the triggering of effects.
- Besides all this, the whole new asset creation system within the Project Editor remains a work in progress, of course.
- As a background task, the DevMode team is always working on improving the overall stability giving special focus to the Project Editor, the Scenery Editor, and the Aircraft Editor. The community’s feedback continues to be very helpful in identifying & fixing bugs and thus making the tools better.
- SimConnect:
- We have fixed the functions related to AI objects and AI aircraft.
Third Party Update
- The third party creator community is just amazing and we are quite literally overwhelmed by the volume and the quality. Just some numbers:
- Airports:
- 214 have been released on the platform so far (that’s 27 since last week)
- another 48 have been announced and
- an additional 118 are in production by third parties but are not yet announced officially.
- In total 380 airports are either already released or are in active production. Just stunning to see the amount of enthusiasm and productivity.
- Aircraft:
- 9 aircraft have been released (+2 since last week),
- another 56 are announced, plus
- there are another 20 unannounced.
- So overall, 85 aircraft are either released or are in production.
- Just to mention it, we are super excited to see what Aerosoft, Hans, Stefan and the rest of the team are doing with the CRJ. It’s so rewarding to see a team embrace the SDK and create a complex aircraft with it. It’s just great quality and we are so excited to see this come together!
- Scenery:
- 29 scenery add-ons have been released (+4 from last week) and this category is thriving. Great to see all the progress.
- Airports:
