SEPTEMBER 24TH, 2020 DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

POSTED BY: MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR TEAM

Today, we were happy and proud to announce “World Update I: Japan” at the Tokyo Game Show 2020. As always, it took a village to produce this update done and we had the help of many teams inside and outside of Microsoft to make this happen.

The Bing Maps team delivered 6 incredible photogrammetry cities and an all-new digital elevation map that increases the detail of the entirety of Japan significantly. We also had help from Gaya Simulations, an excellent scenery and airport developer. Gaya created 3 of the airports RJFU – Nagasaki, RJTH – Hachijojima, and RJCK – Kushiro as well as all of the 20 new POIs. Blackshark.ai added a new traditional Japanese building type. Of course, the team at Asobo put it all together and created three additional airports – ROKR – Kerama, RORS – Shimojisjima and RJX8 – Suwanosejima as well as the three landing challenges and all the other elements needed to make the DLC a great experience. We hope you will enjoy this update… Japan is  an incredibly beautiful and diverse country.

As we’ve always said, our launch in August was just the beginning. Our goal is to provide you with a meaningful update to the sim every month. In addition to increasing the visual detail of the planet with future World Updates, we also plan to add Simulation Updates every 2-3 months that will further enhance the overall sim experience. On top of that, we are developing some exciting paid DLC that we plan to rollout over the coming months and years, and we will share more information in the future. We are on an incredible journey together and we are committed to work with you, the community, to continue to improve and evolve Microsoft Flight Simulator for many years to come.

– MSFS Team

 

Partnership Series Update

Partnership series announcement has been moved to next week. The announcement will feature Gaya Simulations.

 

 

SDK Update

The SDK team has been expanded to improve and expand the SDK functionality more quickly and to provide more thorough documentation. Recent work focused on:

• WebAssembly: Improvements to the GDI+ compatibility layer and improvements to the ease of development and debugging capabilities is the current focus. Visual Studio 2017 support has also been added.
• The glTF exporter now supports 3D Studio Max 2021.
• We fixed the SimConnect facilities API and plan on expanding it.
• On the Developer Mode side, we are working on improving overall usability: we enhanced the visualization for roads, terraforming shapes and exclusion rectangles. The editor now doesn’t allow for invalid ground merging parameters.

 

Third Party Developers

Applications to our Marketplace Partner Program have now passed 1000, which is astonishing. Every day, we see new announcements of new airports, aircraft and other useful tools and add-ons being announced and we are over to moon to see the level of creativity and quality coming to the platform. Last week, we launched 4 all-new products in the in-sim marketplace – including Carenado’s second plane on the platform and new airports from Aerosoft, ORBX and Stairport! With over 40 approved partners the next weeks will feature even more great new releases.

 

Feedback Snapshot

 

Twitch Update

Our monthly live developer Q&A is scheduled for this coming Wednesday, September 30th, at 10:30am PDT (1730Z). In addition, we will have a guest pilot, Shinji Maeda, join us on October 1st to explore the sim. And last but not least, we have a great guided tour of Japan planned next Friday. Everyone can join in a fly with us for that one! We are looking forward to answering your questions and connecting with the community next week.

 

Marketplace Update

Last week we released 4 new products into our marketplace and 1 updated product

4 NEW PRODUCTS

1 UPDATED PRODUCT

SOME JAPAN SCREENSHOTS

 

MORE AMAZING SCREENSHOTS FROM THE COMMUNITY

Screenshot by c0mmanderkiller

 

Screenshot by Wh1te506

 

Screenshot by SimFlight2020

 

Screenshot by RancidViper6904

 

Screenshot by aymerixfr

 

Screenshot by gordongreig

 

Screenshot by NoYawControl

 

Screenshot by Wh1te506

 

Screenshot by c0mmanderkiller

 

Screenshot by Matt19923615

 

Screenshot by cirurginn

 

NEXT UPDATE – 10.01

Sincerely,

Microsoft Flight Simulator Team

Edited September 24, 20205 yr by ChaoticBeauty

@ChaoticBeauty

I’m finally on time to give you a 🌲

So, in the case of the new update, should we expect middle of octobre or in 2-3 month?

I love this game, but 2-3 CTDs per evening is a bit much

Edited September 24, 20205 yr by bendead

5 minutes ago, bendead said:

So, in the case of the new update, should we expect middle of octobre or in 2-3 month?

I love this game, but 2-3 CTDs per evening is a bit much

29 September, along with World Update I. The Feedback Snapshot mentions some of the stuff that was fixed for that update.

More specifically, Update 3 improves the matters with CTDs, random crashes and A320neo issues.

Furthermore, a DirectX 12 update is confirmed again and will fix the grainy reflections.

Edited September 24, 20205 yr by ChaoticBeauty

It's so confusing they use the same word "update" for "development update" and for "patch". Go figure!

I love how they're adding variety to the world instead of concentrating on the more main stream locales.

Plus the amount of new content/updates coming out is astonishing.  

Hoping one day they'll give the Panama Canal the full treatment like what they've done here as it would def look amazing! 

Nice so looks like a lot of the fixes from the last patch is at least coming with the Japan patch.  Wish we could get some timelines for the wish list but I am glad to see it.

I’m going to guess that the sensitivity menu bug will also be fixed in the Japan patch, even though it wasn’t listed in the bugs screenshot.

8 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

29 September, along with World Update I. The Feedback Snapshot mentions some of the stuff that was fixed for that update.

Ok, great news, hope it will fix my issue,

By the way, will the World Update be free or is this a paid DLC?

1 minute ago, bendead said:

Ok, great news, hope it will fix my issue,

By the way, will the World Update be free or is this a paid DLC?

its free

1 minute ago, ckukmale said:

its free

Awesome 😄

So, if I'm reading this correctly, there's no fix coming for the G1000/3000 next week, and patches are only once a month so basically another month at least?  I've been patient but that's a long time to wait, considering things barely seem to work at this point.  Hopefully I'm reading that wrong, but it doesn't seem like anything is coming for any of those issues next week.  

2 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

So, if I'm reading this correctly, there's no fix coming for the G1000/3000 next week, and patches are only once a month so basically another month at least?  I've been patient but that's a long time to wait, considering things barely seem to work at this point.  Hopefully I'm reading that wrong, but it doesn't seem like anything is coming for any of those issues next week.  

Look at the yellow text in the Top Bugs, Feedback snapshot.

1 minute ago, kerosene31 said:

So, if I'm reading this correctly, there's no fix coming for the G1000/3000 next week, and patches are only once a month so basically another month at least?  I've been patient but that's a long time to wait, considering things barely seem to work at this point.  Hopefully I'm reading that wrong, but it doesn't seem like anything is coming for any of those issues next week.  

It's tagged as "Work In Progress", which is somewhat vague but it could mean that some progress has already been made. Probably best not to expect any fixes until the next major update, but I wouldn't rule them out.

I really appreciate all work and effort that Asobo and MS are putting into this sim, I think they are showing us a high commitment to solve the most important issues of the community, I feel that fix those issues takes more time that some people is willing to wait, but if we can be a bit more patient we will have more constructive posts in the forums.

I am pretty sure next week many of us will be enjoying flying a "buggy sim" in Japan, but sooner than later this will become with no doubt in the best sim to date, just lets be a bit more patient