As someone whose knowledge about software development lies slightly below a rabbit's but above a Kardashian's, it's difficult to know what benefits 10.30 brings to developers. 

 

Can anyone give me a very layman's idea about how the changes help devs and what potential developments we can expect for the sim now?

For my part, I requested 1 feature for 10.30 which was support for using multiple road.net files. This means that we can add new road types, power lines, and railway types and use them in conjunction with the existing ones in the same scenery file. I use this in World2XPlane 0.5.0 to add gondolas, ski lifts and minor power lines not seen in the default scenery. Just to add, I was kindly given permission to use these new road/vector types from alpilotx, who uses them in his NZ scenery. Major difference now is that there is no need to have two separate sceneries. A goal of mine when I can decrypt how to create custom roads is to replace the US roads with more European ones, and also make regional changes, such as in UK/JP/NZ cars drive on the other side of the road, etc..

 

Secondly, they finally fixed a long standing bug which didn't allowe us to place pylons/gondola pylons where we want (The simulator just guessed). This caused lots of problems such as pylons ending up in water or inside someone's house, etc.. Now they appear exactly where the pylon is inside OSM.

From the flight dynamics POV, they also added the new 6 moment / force datarefs allowing aircraft desginers to fine tune, for example, the limited prop physics in X-Plane.

 

Theoretically a talented aircraft designer with access to RW data can now add ad realistic yaw and less roll due to prop effects, depending on aircraft. For rotary wings there are also new chances and also for spacecraft.

From the flight dynamics POV, they also added the new 6 moment / force datarefs allowing aircraft desginers to fine tune, for example, the limited prop physics in X-Plane.

 

Theoretically a talented aircraft designer with access to RW data can now add ad realistic yaw and less roll due to prop effects, depending on aircraft. For rotary wings there are also new chances and also for spacecraft.

 

Are there any aircraft developers using the new dataref to add spiraling slip stream ?

Are there any aircraft developers using the new dataref to add spiraling slip stream ?

 

Not that I know of :-/

Those new scenery types sound interesting. Any changes in autogen variety would be helpful in adding a bit of local colour to the northern hemisphere. 

 

Interesting though they are, the changes do seem a bit minor; I thought 10.30 was a major update for developers?