It has been a busy week for the Microsoft Flight Simulator development team. On Tuesday this week, as many will most certainly know, they released the third World Update for the simulator, this time focusing on the UK and Ireland. Tuesday’s update also brought bug fixes and some improvements. A full list can be found in the release notes below.
The World Update brought over 80 points of interest, improvements to 85 airports, and five cities have received the photogrammetry treatment. These cities are London, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, and Bristol. Five airports have been handcrafted, such as Barra, Liverpool, Land’s End, Manchester-Barton, and Out Skerries.
If you have not already accessed the update, the team do make a number of recommendations prior to downloading the update. These are:
- If you are using the manual cache feature, please make sure to delete it via the in-game menu and create an updated version as we performed some backend technical updates.
- Some packages in your community folder may not have been updated and, as a result, may have an unexpected impact on the title’s performance and behavior. Please move your community package(s) to another folder before relaunching the title if you suffer from stability issues or long loading times.
- After you download the newest update for Microsoft Flight Simulator, head to the Marketplace to download the free World Update.
Following on from this major update, the team has also posted their regular weekly development update, making a note of the recent update to the simulator. They have also sought to introduce content creators from the UK & Ireland, namely Chewwy94, TwoToneMurphy, ObsidianAnt, and LondonController, who provide information and tutorials on many subjects related to the new simulator.
THIRD PARTY UPDATE
We were buzzing this week after announcements and previews for several exciting aircraft in development: CRJ 550/700 from Aerosoft, Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXc from FlyingIron Simulator, SR-71 Blackbird from MilViz, Spitfire Mk1afrom Aeroplane Heaven and many more.
- We have a total of 120 approved payware partners (+10 from last week) and 192 products (+16 from last week) live in the in-sim store.
- 646 products (+36) have already been released in 3rd party stores and the in-sim marketplace. Beyond that, another 269 products (-4) from 3rd party developers are in production (147 announced, 122 unannounced). In total, over 915 3rd party products (+32) are either released or are in development.
- Airports:
- 583 airports (+21) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- 408 airports (+24) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
- 162 airports (+15) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
- 72 airports (-3) beyond the released airports have been announced.
- 103 airports (+0) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an airport is in production.
- 583 airports (+21) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- Aircraft:
- 112 aircraft (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- 21 aircraft (+1) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
- 10 aircraft (+1) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
- 72 aircraft (+1) beyond the released aircraft have been announced.
- 19 aircraft (-1) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an aircraft is in production.
- 112 aircraft (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- Scenery:
- 206 sceneries (+9) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- 203 sceneries (+10) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
- 15 sceneries (+0) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
- 3 sceneries (-1) beyond the released scenery have been announced.
- 206 sceneries (+9) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- Missions:
- 14 missions (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
- 14 missions (+1) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
- 0 missions (+0) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
- 0 missions (+0) beyond the released missions have been announced.
- 14 missions (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
SDK UPDATE
- DevMode:
- Fixed Scenery Editor issues when changing object display name.
- New documentation is in polishing phase with improvements on page load times. All the content from old documentation was imported in the new system; we are now adding new chapters.
- Contrail effects will soon be available in-game, and the Visual Effects Editor is being reviewed and documented. We will ship it along with samples.
RELEASE NOTES 1.13.15.0
PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY
- Fixed various crashes across the title
- Fixed a specific crash while using Little Navmap in Bush trip activities
WORLD
- Several terrain spikes have been fixed, including incorrect cases of water elevation issues
- Water masks have been updated across various locations in the world
- Reduced the frequency of water artifacts appearing on cliffs
- Noise issue affecting clouds has been fixed
VR
- The ‘Activate/Deactivate VR’ button is now always displayed in the main menu (bottom left corner of the screen) when a VR headset is plugged in. If no controls are displayed on this button, then it means that no controls are bound to this action.
- When the toolbar is opened, it does not block interactions anymore with other menus displayed in front of it.
- The cursor doesn’t jump anymore when moving across the Options menu in the cockpit.
- Gray boxes don’t appear anymore when using the ‘Travel to’ feature in VR.
- After leaving VR mode, the sim window is no longer forced on top and the player can drag and drop any other window over it.
PLANES
- Fixed induced speed calculation bug with bi propeller engines
- Fixed the plane crash detection when landing on iced water with crash detection ‘ON’
- Fixed swapped screens in DA62 TestPilot version
- Fixed VS Knob Turn not working on the Airbus A320Neo
- Improved flaps system of aircraft: Aircraft creators can now move the wing surface’s position and camber with each flap system at each flap level
- Improved ground effect wing to ground interaction system to avoid pitch dip at rotation on some aircraft
NAVIGATION
- Latest AIRAC cycle has been integrated and is now available
INPUT
- CH ECLIPSE YOKE default preset have been added
- Fixed Thrustmaster TCA Quadrant ENG 1+2 don’t start engines
SDK/DEVMODE
DEV MODE:
- New version of the console is now available
- Fixed an issue related to UTF8 encoding in the BGL compiler
SCENERY EDITOR:
- New feature to group, rename, re-order, hide and lock items in the scene list
- Fixed freeze during saving
- New airport light system
- Add a button in airport properties to generate taxiway signs
- Improve heightmap edition
- Don’t lock runway profile extremity
- Fix taxiway sign size (wasn’t correctly serialized in BGL)
AIRCRAFT EDITOR:
- Fixed an issue with the saving of “static_thrust”
- Added a new button in the Camera section of the aircraft editor to teleport the current developer camera to the position, rotation and zoom of the selected one.
- Creation of a new tool to edit only a camera file (cameras.cfg) : it matches with the camera section of the aircraft editor
WASM:
- Security vulnerabilities in the WASI layer have been reported and fixed
- Fixed StringFormat conversion to NanoVG alignment in GDI+ layer
- Reworked MouseAircraft left gauge to provide clearer information
SIMCONNECT:
- Fixed flight load/save (SimConnect_FlightLoad / SimConnect_FlightSave)
POINTS OF INTEREST
- One Blackfriars
- BT Tower
- Newfoundland
- St George Wharf Tower
- Southbank Tower
- 20 Fenchurch Street/ Sky Garden
- The Leadenhall Building / 122 Leadenhall Street
- HSBC / 8 Canada Square
- Tower 42
- 25 Canada Square / City Bank
- 22 Bishopsgate
- Landmark Pinnacle
- Heron Tower
- One Park Drive
- The Scalpel
- The Madison
- 100 Bishopsgate
- Aykon London One
- 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin)
- Strata
- Palace of Holyroodhouse
- Blenheim Palace
- St. James’s Palace
- Palace of Westminster
- Glamis Castle
- Buckingham Palace
- Archbishop’s Palace, Maidstone
- Wolvesey Castle
- Floors Castle
- Balmoral Castle
- Hillsborough Castle
- Dublin Castle
- Mount Stuart House
- Blair Castle
- Hampton Court Palace
- Rock of Cashel
- Stirling Castle
- Warwick Castle
- Windsor Castle
- Blarney Castle
- Eilean Donan Castle
- Edinburgh Castle
- Caernarfon Castle
- Canterbury Cathedral
- Durham Cathedral
- Fountains Abbey
- Lincoln Cathedral
- Salisbury Cathedral
- St. Paul’s Cathedral
- Westminster Abbey
- York Minster
- Angel of the North
- Blackpool Tower
- British Airways i360 (Brighton)
- Glenfinnan Viaduct
- Humber Bridge
- Jodrell Bank Observatory
- Kelpies, The
- Maritime Greenwich
- Pontcysyllte Aqueduct
- Royal Botanical Gardens
- Royal Liver Building
- Samson & Goliath (Cranes)
- Spinnaker Tower
- Stonehenge
- Titanic Belfast
- Tower of London
- Wales Millenium Centre
- Wallace Monument
- All England Club
- Anfield
- Emirates Stadium
- Goodison Park
- Millennium Stadium
- Old Trafford
- St. James’ Park
- Stamford Bridge
- Twickenham Stadium
- Villa Park
- Wembley Stadium
- Eden Project
- London Eye
- Southend Pier
- Millennium Bridge London
- Blackfriars Railway Bridge
- Southwark Bridge
- Cannon Street Railway Bridge
- Blackfriars Bridge
- Vauxhall Bridge
- Grosvenor Bridge
- One Canada Sqaure
- Waterloo Bridge
- Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges
- Lambeth Bridge
- Chelsea Bridge
- Albert Bridge London
- Battersea Bridge
- Battersea Railway Bridge
- Wandsworth Bridge
- Clifton Suspension Bridge
- Forth Rail Bridge
- Forth Road Bridge
- Queensferry Crossing
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge
- Tees Transporter Bridge
- Tower Bridge
- Tyne Bridge
- Westminster Bridge
