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Recently, the Microsoft Flight Simulator team once again held one of their Developer Live Streams, in which they talked about the near future of Asobo Studio’s Microsoft Flight Simulator. What is the fourth quarter of 2023 going to bring us to this virtual world of planes?
Table of Contents
Feedback Snapshot
In the feedback snapshot, the developers talked about the current reported bugs and their stage of fixing or removing them. As of September 28th, the Asobo Studio team is focusing on mismatching live weather, photogrammetry and LOD, the visible horizon line which is partially fixed in the latest Sim Update and the bandwidth pop-up has been resolved as well.
This also applies to multiplayer issues, coastline glitches and terrain glitches which are gradually being resolved in world updates.
The team is also investigating further bugs, like mirrored textures on the 787, incorrect ATC phraseology, road and street lights and more.
New Famous Flyer
A host also joined the team of Jorg, Sebastian and Martial, Michael Standen from iniBuilds, who spoke about the seventh Famous Flyer for the simulator they are developing. Currently, the plane is completely finished, but there were some problems with licensing and it is uncertain when this plane is going to be released.
This new plane is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries MU-2 a utility plane with a huge number of variations. The team has focused on the early model with shorter fuselage and unmodified landing gear. It is an executive and utility transport plane, used as a medical and police aircraft with special flight controls so only a few people can actually fly this plane in the world. This is because instead of ailerons, the roll was controlled by spoilers. The plane offers Gerret GP331 engines, and it can fly over 800 nautical miles in an altitude of 25000 feet. The plane is pressurized and can be flown A-to-B using VOR/NAV navigation.
For those unfamiliar with VOR/NAV navigation can fit their plane with Garmin 530 and its panels. There is also a fully functional autopilot and the plane is capable of doing ILS approaches.
World Update 15
Northern Europe and Greenland, new aerial imagery, 8-10 photogrammetry cities, 90 POI, 3 landing challenges, 3 bush trips, 3 discovery flights, high-resolution terrain data
The World Update 15 is going to once again update Northern Europe and Greenland. The team decided to revisit this location of the world in this world update, as the previous World Update 5: Nordics is not as well-preserved in the community due to the lack of detail. Most of World Update 5’s issues should the World Update 15 resolve.
This update is as mentioned going to cover Greenland and Northern Europe, that being the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, as well as Iceland and the Faroe Islands. This update is also going to include Greenland, which had previously issues with the amount of snow coverage, which was much larger than it should have been.
This World Update is also going to offer eight to ten photogrammetry cities, over 90 points of interest, three landing challenges, three bush trips and three discovery flights in this region.
Speaking of bespoke airports, the most notable one is definitely Kiruna Airport (ESNQ), then Leknes Airport (ENLK), Akureyri (BIAR), Ivalo (EFIV) and some more, all of them being developed by Gaya Simulations. Gaya Simulations also stands behind some of the points of interest found in this package.
New Local Legend
Somewhere in the middle of the live stream, the team spoke about the thirteenth Local Legend for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The plane is going to be SAAB B 17, also developed by iniBuilds. However, not much detail was given about this plane.
Sim Update 14
A new simulator update is also in active development as of this date. The first things that are mentioned by Jorg on the stream in terms of Sim Update 14 are improvements to the snow coverage, stability improvements and multiplayer issues. Initially, this update should’ve been known as Aircraft and Avionics Update 3. However, with the amount of stuff this is going to bring, its codename was changed to Sim Update 14.
The team also started fixing bugs in regards to the default ATC. However, this is mostly about bug fixes and a complete overhaul is not planned for Sim Update 14. There are also going to be atmospheric improvements, especially for the colour of ozone and more.
A New SR22 in Sim Update 14
Working Title is working on a new Cirrus SR22 rendition for Microsoft Flight Simulator that is going to replace the current rendition that is in the simulator. This version is going to include an all-new model and art, a full-screen engine instruments page, a weight and balance page, overhauled flight and engine models and much more.
The plane is also going to include TCAS as Working Title was asked to do by Cirrus. Matt from Working Title also previewed the new avionics. Unfortunately, at the moment there are no 3D previews of the aeroplane within the simulator.
All New Airbus A320
In Sim Update 14, a new version of the Airbus A320 NEO is going to be included. This version will be living alongside the current A320 NEO and it is not replacing the current version because of how many things this would break within the simulator itself. This especially concerns missions and landing challenges with this particular aeroplane.
once again, iniBuilds is developing this plane and it is going to be on the same level of quality, if not better, as their Airbus A310 available since November.
This new A320 NEO should be available before Christmas when the Sim Update is going to be released.
Roadmap Overview
Lastly, the team showed a roadmap for the last quarter of 2023, and as we can see from this image, apart from all the stuff that was announced in this Developer Live Stream, we still should get a new Local Legend and a new Famous Flyer in November. In December, we can expect the release of Sim Update 14 with all its perks and also the ninth Famous Flyer in the family.
In addition, Jorg mentions something about the Microsoft Flight Simulator roadmap for 2024 that still concerns the current version of the simulator. He says that 2024 is going to be very exciting in terms of the stuff that Microsoft Flight Simulator is going to offer.
