October 8th, 2020 - Development Update

[pstrub 998]

1 hour ago, Marco Manieri said:

They are also likely working on stuff other than bug fixing.

VR, seasons, helis are probably being worked by some of those 120 Asobo employees.

Not to mention the SDK and API for 3rd party developers. That's rather inconspicuous for normal users, but I'm sure it's pretty high on their priority list right now and is keeping a lot of developers busy.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

3 minutes ago, pstrub said:

Not to mention the SDK and API for 3rd party developers. That's rather inconspicuous for normal users, but I'm sure it's pretty high on their priority list right now and is keeping a lot of developers busy.

There is probably some synergy there as well, in that problems they are working on for the third parties, and things that are being added and tools that are being developed, will in turn provide some solutions for various customer issues....

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

The constraints placed on the SDK is more of an access issue than a strictly technical one. Asobo is limiting certain types of access to the sim's inner workings and rightly so. There are more features that could be made available to developers via the SDK and SimConnect, but there are so many bugs and performance issues in MSFS at the moment that doing so might just destabilize the sim even more. Think about Asobo potentially adding features like weather injection and controlling AI aircraft. Both are performance hogs in every other sim. If a company like HiFi introduced  Active Sky for MSFS tomorrow, many users would buy it and having it running would confound efforts on Asobo's part to isolate bugs. 3PDs have figured out how to add offline AI traffic, but if one flies near a big international airport, the sim will CTD because the performance tanks.

Unfortunately, the philosophy behind limiting the SDK also has drawbacks, as this is just encouraging 3PDs to endrun the formal mechanism of the SDK. Not having weather injection included in the SDK did not stop REX from creating an add-on that injects weather. The longer that it takes Asobo to improve the SDK, the more we will see these types of add-ons released. Of course, Asobo is quite capable of blocking unwanted access to the MSFS core, but so far they haven't done so.

[SlowFlyer 78]

On 10/9/2020 at 5:50 PM, HiFlyer said:

So I'll repeat. There is no pleasing us.

I love your posts, but in fairness, I don't think you can lump "us" all into  one statement. Thousands (and more) of us each have our own priorities of what we want, don't want, like, dislike, is acceptable, is not complete, etc.

It will be a like an shop owner opening up an ice cream shop, and someone comes in, and says, "I bought your ice cream and I hate it". Another person says, "I Love your ice cream".  It would be unusual for the owner to say, "geez, I can't please everyone; I better close up shop", when hundreds of other customers are buying his ice cream. I would think he would at times listen the opinion of the haters to see if he can find out why the person hates his ice cream, and maybe be able to improve upon it (if it's doable and still profitable, and he cares about adding sales. Or maybe he has enough sales for the lovers, and says, "no soup, I mean, ice cream for YOU". 

Asobo will determine what we eventually get. They will determine what features they implement based on whatever they think is important (good will, more products sold, too much effort, not possible for a 100 dollar game, let have third parties do it, etc). But we might get more if people point out what other features we want. The sqeeky wheel...and all.

I think (imho)  it's great that people are expressing their "views" even if it's blunt and comes across a bit angry. To me, it means they are really passionate about flight sims, and they want to see the best it can provide. They wouldn't bother to post if they didn't love flight sims. I know I don't post or read forums I have little interest in.  

Of course, posters should vent in a way that's not profane-filled, with name calling, etc but those post are lively and interesting. It makes good reading for me. If it gets too much, I am good at skimming right over whole pages of posts.

I like that Asobo has video talks, and answer questions. I would love it if they would come here once and in a while answer a question or give exclusive info to us. But they do shout our at AVSIM at times, I find that cool.

Edited October 10, 2020 by SlowFlyer

[sarp_79 11]

On 10/9/2020 at 12:45 AM, 767lover said:

Fantastic update. 

Asobo, please look at the current water as well, it is not as pretty anymore as it was in the beginning, less reflective, less crisp, flat. 

I couldn't agree more, the microsoft flight simulator team should fix the downgraded water textures and reflections without further ado.

[Steku 158]

How a feature (e.g. Multi Monitor Functionality) be "Work in Progress" and "Backlog" at the same time? 

Backlog means - we have it on the list for the future? Or somathing different? 

[suncoastflyer 685]

On 10/10/2020 at 6:16 PM, SamYeager said:

I understand your point but to be fair the NGXu or whatever it ends up being called would still cost $US100 or more to use in MFS as well. GSX, Active Sky and the airports along with their region are another matter altogether.

Indeed. The main point I was jabbing at there was that P3D cost me $200 and it doesn't even come with any aircraft that are worth using. At least MFS has enough content to mostly satisfy VFR flying. P3D has literally nothing. I bought a skeleton and the organs are DLC.

[frankla 44]

I didn't see the next word update - United State in the road map.  Anyone knows when that is coming?

[FlyIce 354]

The US world update is said to be coming in November. 

[Shug 210]

On 10/9/2020 at 10:59 AM, captain420 said:

Nice work, there's world updates for NA and then Central & South America, 

I couldn't find any mention about world updates for Central and South America. Can you provide a link please?

Thanks.

[sauviat 137]

11 hours ago, Shug said:

Can you provide a link please?

It's in the latest MS/Asobo Q&A video in that they mention it will follow after the US. Go to the MFS website to find it: https://www.flightsimulator.com/

Martin

[pstrub 998]

16 minutes ago, sauviat said:

It's in the latest MS/Asobo Q&A video in that they mention it will follow after the US. Go to the MFS website to find it: https://www.flightsimulator.com/

Martin

I watched the stream live, and I didn't hear them mention Central and South America as world updates. I checked again here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_ODML7IQc , but they didn't say anything about world updates after the US in the respective section at 1:30 - 2:28 . Or did I miss anything? Maybe you're mixing it up with the Around the World video series? They announced  "Around the World: Episode 6: Central & South America & The Caribbean" as the upcoming episode...

 

 

[sauviat 137]

Hi, You'll have to go back to the first Q&A; it is here that was mentioned that following the Round The World videos of a particular region the Region would be released. i.e Japan, USA (next) and then South America and the Caribbean and so on.

Martin

[Scottoest 1,561]

On 10/10/2020 at 2:01 PM, Marco Manieri said:

They are also likely working on stuff other than bug fixing.

VR, seasons, helis are probably being worked by some of those 120 Asobo employees.

My impression based on what they've said about seasons, is that it's probably in somewhat of an informal pre-production phase where they are trying to figure out how they even want to do it.  Jorg mentions in the recent Q&A that there's lots of different ways to approach seasons, and some would probably be more impressive than others.

VR definitely has it's own team right now.  Helicopters are probably being worked on by their modelers and sound teams (whose job on the main sim will have been mostly done for a little while now).  The Xbox port definitely has a sizable team, that probably overlaps (partially or completely) the DX12 team, since the next-gen Xbox uses DX12U.  They'll also have a team dedicated to working on their periodic world updates like the Japan one - acquiring and integrating better data, working with people at Bing, etc.  And they'll have an SDK team who probably also liaises with third parties on a daily basis.

I'd imagine the single biggest team is still the people doing primary development, systems work, and bug squashing on the main sim.

[LarryD 132]

On 10/12/2020 at 5:52 PM, Shug said:

I couldn't find any mention about world updates for Central and South America. Can you provide a link please?

Thanks.

It's actually in this very thread.  Page 1, first message.  Development Roadmap graphic.  October 29th.