The Microsoft Flight Simulator team has taken to its website to share the latest development update after the developer live-stream on March 13, 2024. It includes some great new information about the upcoming iniBuilds A320 NEO, the next City Update, the next Famous Flyer, and about the sim and SU15 in general.
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iniBuilds A320 NEO
Cameron from iniBuilds joined Asobo in the development stream to talk about and showcase the A320 NEO and what changes were made from the version previously seen in the SU14 beta. Originally planned for release with SU14, the iniBuilds A320 NEO was released to testers in the SU14 beta, but Asobo decided not to include it in the full SU14 release due to some major stability issues it was having, particularly with the Xbox platform.
On stream, Cameron showed off some of the great texture work that iniBuilds has done on both the interior and exterior of the aircraft and talked about some of the systems improvements they have done, like a new FADEC and engine simulation, which will have realistic engine temperatures and will keep the engines cranking for longer than usual on startup to cool them down during short turnarounds.
Another feature demonstrated was the fly-by-wire simulation, where Cameron set flaps 1 and pitched the airplane up to 30 degrees, at which point the fly-by-wire didn’t let him pitch up anymore and started automatically pitching down as the stall speed approached.
Cameron remarked that none of the plane’s functionality was lost when improving its stability and that, in fact, they added more features compared to the SU14 beta version. The iniBuilds A320 NEO will be released for free alongside SU15 this March 26.
City Update 6: South Germany
City Update 6 will focus on the region of Southern Germany and will include updates that improve the general look of buildings and add landmarks such as bridges and stadiums to the following cities:
- Mannheim
- Heidelberg
- Karlsruhe
- Stuttgart
- Esslingen
- Kehl
- Strasbourg
This city update will also include a custom Friedrichshafen Airport (EDNY) developed by iniBuilds. Friedrichshafen is a minor international airport located about two miles north of Friedrichshafen city and is home to the Dornier Museum, itself home to one of three Dornier Do 31s that were ever built.
Local Legend 15: Dornier Do 31
The Dornier Do 31 was an experimental VTOL cargo aircraft developed by Dornier in the 1960s in response to heavy interest from the German Air Force to acquire an SVTOL-capable aircraft. Only three were ever built before the project was canceled in April 1970 after the German Air Force realized that the cost and complexity of operating VTOL aircraft was not worth the investment, and thus ceased trials for this and other experimental German aircraft of similar type.
The sim version of this local legend is being developed by iniBuilds. Michael Standen joined the dev stream to show off some of the work that’s been done in recreating this aircraft, with great attention to detail paid to the modeling, textures, and the quirky flight characteristics of this VTOL oddity.
Additional Improvements Coming in SU15
Apart from the already known improvements coming in SU15, the following additional improvements were talked about on stream:
- Stability: Asobo has been working hard on improving the stability of the SU15 beta after many crashes were reported by testers. Due to the numerous changes coming in SU15, Asobo had to work on improving the memory management of the sim to reduce the number of crashes and it has managed to improve it to the point where it’s now more stable than SU14 was during its release.
- WASM Module Memory: In MSFS, the WASM module is responsible for translating C++ code to Javascript for the simulator to use. Asobo found a few issues with the memory allocation of the WASM module and worked to rewrite parts of it to improve this aspect. The result is that the WASM module is now able to free up some of the memory it was keeping to itself before, meaning that the performance of aircraft with complex systems that rely on this module should improve once their developers update them with the new SDK.
- LOD Changes of Xbox: Asobo has worked to improve the way that LODs work for Xbox versions of the sim. Sebastian explained that textures have always been one of the biggest memory users in Xbox. With these changes, the texture LODs will be lowered when the console is running out of memory, ensuring that the instrument screens of aircraft don’t turn black and improving the stability of the sim on consoles in general.
Highlights from Q&A Sessions
The following are some of the highlight answers from the Q&A sessions:
- Water Masks from Caribbean World Update: The water masks for the various islands in the Caribbean World update had to be removed due to quality issues and Asobo promised to add them back once it had finished working on improving the quality. On March 13, right before the dev stream, Asobo released these updated water masks and they are now available in the sim again.
- Weather API and its ability to function in a 3D model: It was explained on stream that providing a weather API would be very difficult, not for technical reasons, but because of the fact that Asobo does not own the weather data that the sim uses for real-world weather, meaning that they would have to expose their weather partner Meteoblue’s weather data for free just for simmers to use in the simulator.
- Seasons and why they were moved to MSFS2024: Sebastian Wloch explained that their plans for seasons included so many big changes that they had to rewrite many core parts of the season and weather system of the simulator, and because of this they decided it would be better to include it in MSFS2024.
- Native Dynamic LOD: Recently, a few new tools that dynamically reduced the terrain LOD when flying lower to the ground have popped up, and Asobo was asked on stream if this could be introduced natively. Sebastian said that it was a very good idea, and would likely not require much work to introduce on PC since there’s already a system like this on Xbox.
FlightFX Vision Jet and Jetson 1 to be Included in MSFS2024
The last thing mentioned in the development stream is that Asobo has collaborated with FlightFX to include the experimental JetsonAero Jetson 1 and the Cirrus Vision Jet as default aircraft in MSFS2024. Jorg mentioned that he was contacted by the CEO of Cirrus and he said that he wanted the Vision Jet to be included in the base sim. Not wanting to compete with 3rd party developers, he looked around to see if anyone had developed the Vision Jet and that’s when he found FlightFX’s version.
Asobo is considering removing the FlightFX Vision Jet from the MSFS marketplace in the future to avoid having people purchase it right before MSFS2024’s release. Jorg also mentioned that you can expect the planes in MSFS2024 to be “payware quality”, as it seems that Asobo has partnered with a few other 3rd party developers for the default aircraft in the upcoming sim and these developers will slowly be revealed in upcoming dev streams.
That is all for this month’s dev update and stream. If you would like to view the original post and live-stream, you can do so here. For more information on the exciting changes coming in SU15, you can check out our previous dev stream article here.
