A few days ago, the Microsoft Development Team added, yet another, update on their continuous development of Microsoft Flight Simulator. As well as teasing us with plans for Xbox, and VR, the development team also posted a documentary, made by noclip, highlighting the processes and developmental hurdles Microsoft and Asobo had to jump to bring the product to fruition. The video is well worth the watch and is posted below.
The Roadmap gives some indication of what is planned in the near future. Sim Update 2 is due on the 23rd of December, however, a recent MSFS Official livestream revealed that full VR support will be included in this update. The initial plan was to release only for the Reverb, but it looks like the team have had a change of heart to now include all VR headsets.
Also coming in the next update will be fixes to bug issues for the Cessna Citation Longitude, and the A320. The Community Wishlist, however, seems to indicate that the developers are listening to, and in some cases implementing, ideas such as multiple screens, replay function, and the addition of helicopters, gliders, and seaplanes, all of which may be coming in 2021.
SDK Update
DevMode:
- We’re still focusing our efforts on improving the new Visual Effects system performance. The corresponding editor has now reached its first basic functional version.
- On the Scenery Editor side, the heightmaps edition is now ready and will be available in a future update. Object grouping feature is still WIP.
- New assets creation system from within the Project Editor is still a work in progress.
- As a background task, the DevMode team is always working on improving the overall stability of the DevMode, with particular focus on the Project Editor, the Scenery Editor, and the Aircraft Editor. The community’s feedback continues to be helpful to identifying and fixing bugs and thus making the tools better.
WebAssembly:
- We are making an effort to lower the iteration time when developing for the platform.
- New security mechanisms have been implemented and others are being studied to protect WASM modules developed by third parties.
Third Party Update
The third party creator community continues to overwhelm us by both volume and the quality. Just some numbers:
- Airports:
- 229 airports (+15 from last week) have been released for the platform so far.
- 74 airports (+10 from last week) are already in our in-sim store.
- 46 airports (-2 from last week) beyond the released airports have been announced.
- 118 airports (+0 from last week) are not announced but in dev based on information from 3rd parties.
- In total 393 airports are either already released or are in active production. Incredible!
- Aircraft:
- 12 aircraft (+3 from last week) have been released for the platform so far.
- 5 aircraft (+0 from last week) are already in our in-sim store.
- 55 aircraft (-1 from last week) beyond the released airplanes have been announced.
- 20 aircraft (+0 from last week) are not announced but in dev based on information from 3rd parties.
- So overall, 87 aircraft are either released or are in production.
- The CRJ from Aerosoft is getting really close and it’s awesome – we are very excited to see what the team has accomplished!
- Scenery:
- 34 scenery add-ons (+5 from last week) have been released for the platform so far.
- 8 scenery add-ons (+2 from last week) are already in our in-sim store.
- 3 scenery add-ons (+0 from last week) have been announced.
Our conversations with freeware groups like Working Title and Fly By Wire continued and we are working on ways to improve and/or increase collaboration with these excellent teams!
