The SDK news is good news

[Claviateur 789]

From the May 14th Update:

"SDK UPDATE

Our focus on the SDK development has been intensified in recent weeks and the SDK is getting more mature as we improve it based on the feedback we receive from 3rd party developers. We are now in contact with more than 200 companies and 400+ developers have access to the SDK.

On the airports side, we are both widening the scope of what can be customized in the sim (e.g. adding the possibility to blend custom aerial imagery on the terrain, creating custom painted lines per airport) and working towards simplifying the adaptation of existing assets to the new simulator (e.g. adding support for projecting meshes).

On the aircraft side, we are working closely with 3rd party developers to ease the transition to WebAssembly and glTF. Just as with airports, we are both extending the possibilities of what can be customized and working to ease the porting of existing assets to the new simulator. We also improve our support for WebAssembly by implementing specification proposals that focus on performance.

The in-game developer mode is also seeing a lot usability improvements based on feedback from the 3rd party developers community. Overall, it’s a great journey we are on and many developers are giving us a peak what they are working on and it’s amazing. We can’t way to share more about our 3rd part partners and their creations in the coming months."

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400+ developers: hopefully many freeware addon creators are on board as well.

Great initiative about expanding customization, flexibility is always welcome and hopefully granular terrain editing would be possible. 

And speaking of editing, now that it's official, there will be an in-game developer mode, and to me this is the best feature ever in a flight sim. Well I suppose and hope we will all have access to it and not just commercial groups.

 All in all, to me this is the best part of the  update, and maybe more exciting than an Alpha invite 😛

 

[mp15 138]

An in-game dev mode sounds incredibile, and It would be great if each attribute tool have a help text bar on It, if its code-less, it would be a dream to have all this.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

I don’t quite understand what they mean by « projecting » mesh. Is it that 3rd party mesh (« existing assets »), sharper than the default, could be installed without disturbing airport areas which is good (and be needed which is ... less good) ?

[CaptMatto 238]

Anyone have any thoughts on getting data out?

I'd love to be able to pull out my aircraft data when on a flight and publish online on a blog etc.

[Jonathan Berthier 99]

Hopefully they'll have a dedicated API for that, as a frontend dev I could definitely see some fun side projects to tinker with 🙂

[Claviateur 789]

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I don’t quite understand what they mean by « projecting » mesh. Is it that 3rd party mesh (« existing assets »), sharper than the default, could be installed without disturbing airport areas which is good (and be needed which is ... less good) ?

As far as I know and if this is what they mean by mesh projection, it will be like having a custom mesh adapt to a surface underneath "organically". 

Edit: I forgot to mention that most probably they speak about the terrain having a custom mesh that adapt to it and not being stiff... 

If this is what they mean, hopefully the buildings 3D shape (mesh) will also adapt to the terrain to avoid having one side floating and the other sinking.

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Claviateur

[CaptMatto 238]

31 minutes ago, Jonathan Berthier said:

Hopefully they'll have a dedicated API for that, as a frontend dev I could definitely see some fun side projects to tinker with 🙂

Fingers crossed!!! I've been toying with a logbook type of web-app and flight link-up site. I program in PHP & Java so hoping we can pull into those.

[Claviateur 789]

17 minutes ago, Matt Barraud said:

Fingers crossed!!! I've been toying with a logbook type of web-app and flight link-up site. I program in PHP & Java so hoping we can pull into those.

I have the feeling the in-sim tools will not only feature WYSIWYG editing tools but also code / scripting possibility.

"Node" scripting and procedural processes seem to be available if we get what this section of the Airport video shows:

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Claviateur

[tripper721 5]

If the in-game developer mode allows for a WYSIWYG editing bar, this opens the door to so many of us who do not have the coding experience to tinker with this game. I'm jealous and always amazed by the capability of those who have the coding experience when it comes to this game and other games with mods and enhancements, so to allow us mere non-coders some ability to make a change here or there, would be an incredible opportunity. 

[CaptMatto 238]

Does anyone know if there is a way to sign-up as a developer?

[trainplane3 97]

16 minutes ago, Matt Barraud said:

Does anyone know if there is a way to sign-up as a developer?

According to the update from January 16:

If you are a 3rd party developer and have not been in contact with the team, please send an email to msfsim@microsoft.com for more information.

https://www.flightsimulator.com/january-16th-2020-development-update/

[CaptMatto 238]

20 minutes ago, trainplane3 said:

According to the update from January 16:

If you are a 3rd party developer and have not been in contact with the team, please send an email to msfsim@microsoft.com for more information.

https://www.flightsimulator.com/january-16th-2020-development-update/

Thanks! I might see if I can get in touch to see what options there are for exporting data to the web

[Carts85 1,203]

Would someone mind enlightening me...What’s the benefits of this? What sort of possibilities are there with it in the right hands?

[trainplane3 97]

6 minutes ago, Carts85 said:

Would someone mind enlightening me...What’s the benefits of this? What sort of possibilities are there with it in the right hands?

Benefits of early SDK access? The ability to build addons and prep them for release when the sim releases. Or at the very least, get a head start instead of needing to wait for the sim to release and then getting the SDK.

[Claviateur 789]

1 hour ago, Carts85 said:

Would someone mind enlightening me...What’s the benefits of this? What sort of possibilities are there with it in the right hands?

In addition to what trainplane3 said previously, if by any chance you are asking about the benefits of the in-sim tools in the right hands, well everyone can use the in-sim tools that are not based on scripting. These user friendly tools accessible within the simulator, allow the best practices in addon development since they use "native" editing processes. That means, the same processes that were used to create the original simulator scenery. 

In actual simulators, we rely on external applications done by 3rd party developers, very smartly done for sure, but have limited control over the engine. They are at the mercy of the SDK. And sometimes these 3rd party tools use workarounds to compensate for the limited access to the sim engine.

Also these external 3rd party editing tools require constant tests to be done in the simulator to preview the result. And that forces the user to close and reopen the simulator, or reload the scenery every time a small change is done in the external tool. 

In other words, the in-sim tools that do not require scripting, could offer to anyone the possibility for example to finetune or create airport layouts (as demonstrated in the video linked above), modify the terrain, implement ground activity in the airport, create airport infrastructure using the simulator built in assets etc and all this is done in the simulator environment with a live preview.

But of course, among these in-sim tools, we have scripting capability that require multiple levels of knowledge in programming or basic programming logic depending on what you want to do.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Claviateur