JULY 8TH, 2021 DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

Posted by: Microsoft Flight Simulator Team

Screenshot by TrooperKri9819

 

As we steadily approach Xbox launch this month, there is so much happening within our community! From Twitch streams to community events, we can feel the excitement surrounding us. Check out the community section of today’s post for some of the highlights!  And in case you missed it, catch this inspiration video about our favorite local pilot Shinji Maeda, and learn why he likes to fly. Look forward to several more of these videos coming out soon, featuring community members big and small.

 

 

One more surprise: The Carenado C170B is now available in Microsoft Flight Simulator!

 

 

– The MSFS team

 

DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

Click here for the web-friendly version.

 

FEEDBACK SNAPSHOT

Click here for the web-friendly version.

KEY:

SU = Sim Update (3, 4, etc.)

WU = World Update

ASAP = As Soon as Possible

TBD = To Be Determined

Several Releases = Fixes will come over a series of updates

Ongoing Fixes = An item we will continually be working on

Planned = Scheduled to be worked on

Under Investigation = The team is currently looking into the issue

Not Planned = We will likely not work on this

Started = Work as started on this item

 

SDK UPDATE

• General
  • We are currently investigating the last issues for the upcoming update.
• Dev Mode
  • In the Project Editor:
    • We fixed a crash when cleaning current flying aircraft’s package.
  • In the Visual Effects Editor:
    • We continue to fix bugs and adding features such as a color converter, from HSV to RGB.

 

3RD PARTY UPDATE

• As of 07/04, we have now approved 199 (+0) third parties into the in-sim marketplace and – so far 111 (+1) have released 476 products (+10).
• In total, 1,117 products (+19) have already been released in 3rd party stores and the in-sim marketplace. Beyond that, another 350 products (+6) from 3rd party developers are in production (218 announced, 132 unannounced). In total, over 1,467 3rd party products (+25) are either released or are in development.
• Airports:
  • 923 airports (+13) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    • 709 airports (+11) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    • 402 airports (+13) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    • 104 airports (+2) beyond the released airports have been announced.
    • 110 airports (+0) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an airport is in production.
• Aircraft:
  • 176 aircraft (+18 are either released or are in various stages of development.
    • 53 aircraft (+2) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    • 33 aircraft (+2) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    • 101 aircraft (+6) beyond the released aircraft have been announced.
    • 22 aircraft (+0) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an aircraft is in production.
• Scenery:
  • 329 sceneries (+4) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    • 316 sceneries (+6) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    • 32 sceneries (+3) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    • 13 sceneries (-2) beyond the released scenery have been announced.
• Mission Packs:
  • 39 mission packs (+0) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    • 39 mission packs (+0) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    • 4 mission packs (+0) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    • 0 mission packs (+0) beyond the released missions have been announced.

 

MARKETPLACE

Today there are 6 new products and 6 updated products in the Marketplace.

6 NEW PRODUCTS

6 UPDATED PRODUCTS

 

TWITCH UPDATE

Check out our upcoming streams! Follow our Twitch channel here.

Tomorrow, we have a special Community Fly-in Friday event! TwoToneMurphy and the ThunderFlys will takeover for an exciting stream – they will perform a special airshow, we will chat with the ThunderFlys to learn about their process, and even had a group flight where we will learn some flight formation and aerobatics. Mark your calendar for July 9th at 1900Z on the Official MSFS Twitch Channel! More details here.

Next Wednesday, join us for Flying Lessons on the C152! ForderLearntoFly will be teaching us all about VORs. Details here.

 

COMMUNITY VIDEO

This past Saturday, Seedyl and FactualGull hosted the Paris-Dakar Rally for Microsoft 2021, a race and charity event to support Doctors Without Borders. They were able to raise $7,886 that day all thanks to the amazing flight sim community! Seedy explains, “Organizing and participating in the MSFS Paris-Dakar Rally was a real thrill for me and FactualGull. We were completely blown away by the generosity and camaraderie from the MSFS player community as we collectively raised money for Doctors Without Borders throughout this incredibly entertaining event. The amount of charity donations far exceeded our most ambitious fundraising goals. I hope we can equal — or even surpass — this amount for our next community endurance race, the cross-Canada Terry Fox Marathon of Hope flight in September.”

The “Closing Ceremonies and Awards Presentation” will be tonight at 8pm ET / 5 pm PT on SeedyL’s channel. If you are interested in supporting Doctors Without Borders through this charity event, this will be your last chance to donate before they close the fundraising page. In addition, here is a free Doctors Without Borders livery for the DA40 NG created by community member pizzamonster.

 

FEATURED FREEWARE MOD

Check out GotGravel’s Savage Obstruction – Bigger is Better! Rating: 4.9/5. Fun fact: The Obstruction’s outrageous wheels are 1 inch bigger than a 747’s.

From their download page on flightsim.to, “It’s the 1st of April 2021, and you are witness to the dawn of a new era in bush flying! Fly the latest and by far the greatest Savage, the Obstruction! Fitted with top-secret 50 inch Alaskan Humongowheels, because you asked for it! They are designed to provide the pilot with more privacy by making it harder for people to see you. We expect quite a demand due to the very nature of the bush pilot: to get away from it all. And now you truly can!! People can walk past your obnoxious aircraft and have no idea you were even inside!”

GotGravel has also made other mods, such a the Savage Carbon, Savage Grravel, and Vertigo. They even gave a helping to Flying Iron Simulations to help improve the Flight Model of their Spitfire! Thanks for your contributions to the community.

 

SCREENSHOT CHALLENGE

This past week we challenged you to take a screenshot of ” Pilots of the Caribbean”. The winner is featured above. Below are our runner up choices! This week’s Screenshot Challenge: Color Series – Red

Last challenge’s Finalists:

Screenshot by YusufWardana

 

Screenshot by z32ands30

 

Screenshot by BritishAvgk

 

Screenshot by Filippo20032222

 

Screenshot by ScenicAtol3300

 

Screenshot by SnagglePss68

 

Screenshot by Renoi71

 

Screenshot by Jannik207

 

Screenshot by zkdos

 

Screenshot by FTLG1174

 

NEXT DEVELOPMENT UPDATE BLOG – July 15th, 2021

Sincerely,

Microsoft Flight Simulator Team

Edited July 9, 20214 yr by ChaoticBeauty

Wait, did I read it correctly, they will fix the lower quality terrain on higher altitudes with the next update? 🤔 or maybe it is meant here the world map on the choose flight screen?

1 minute ago, omarsmak30 said:

Wait, did I read it correctly, they will fix the lower quality terrain on higher altitudes with the next update? 🤔 or maybe it is meant here the world map on the choose flight screen?

If you mean "High Quality Terrain Map After Zooming In", then it's about the World Map indeed. It was previewed in the extended Xbox showcase, look at 4:04 in this video:

 

Is MS/Asobo/WT et al. or anyone going to be at Oshkosh this year?

🌲🌲🌲

Will PC get the NEW 22 discovery flights or tutorials too? Or a total of 22? I hope so, looks like fun to try and get better scores 🙂

1 hour ago, in2tech said:

Will PC get the NEW 22 discovery flights or tutorials too? Or a total of 22? I hope so, looks like fun to try and get better scores 🙂

I believe that the only thing the PC won't get in SU5 that Xbox will is DX12 implementation.

I wonder if the C170B video was done with the development version due for release on the 27th?  It looks silky smooth.

It's great to see GotGravel getting some recognition (I love all of those planes), and they pointed to flitghsim.to as well.  It makes me wonder if MS / Asobo should do a deal with flightsim.to, to just catalogue all of the freeware stuff outside of the sim.
If they advertised the sim, the income could generate some useful cash for them (as their bandwidth seems to be taking a battering ), and it would reduce the work for Asobo on the promised freeware integration, while keeping the marketplace tidier as well.

 

Edited July 9, 20214 yr by bobcat999

Seeing the open minded vision MSFS and .to can have, I hope this will someday come true.

Edited July 9, 20214 yr by Noooch

15 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

It makes me wonder if MS / Asobo should do a deal with flightsim.to,

All the google photogrammetry will have to go from flightsim.to then. 

Lets hope they fix the LNAV/VNAV functiions (flight planner for the FMC) to the AP so the button pushers can stop the complaining than go back to working on scenery and advanced animations. Function inbuilt replay would be nice also.

23 hours ago, SamYeager said:

I believe that the only thing the PC won't get in SU5 that Xbox will is DX12 implementation.

How do you know? Is there an Asobo statement somewhere? I also would like to see some xbox goodies in the pc version. There are also a lot of newbies in the pc version of the sim.

I remember taking off from Meighs back in the day in FS4, having absolutely no clue how to navigate to another airport. The learning curve was very steep.

So a bit more tutorials will help anyone. And thos discovery flights, and the land anywhere funtion sound like a lot of fun.

Maybe someone can point to an Asobo statement, where they explain the features in SU5.

46 minutes ago, robcap said:

How do you know? Is there an Asobo statement somewhere? I also would like to see some xbox goodies in the pc version. There are also a lot of newbies in the pc version of the sim.

I remember taking off from Meighs back in the day in FS4, having absolutely no clue how to navigate to another airport. The learning curve was very steep.

So a bit more tutorials will help anyone. And thos discovery flights, and the land anywhere funtion sound like a lot of fun.

Maybe someone can point to an Asobo statement, where they explain the features in SU5.

Go to Twitch and watch the June 30th I think it was Live Stream that day. Of course it's still there, and that's where they explained about  DX12, better frames per second, and a few other things. Plus Jorg did a interview with an Xbox person too, or host and explained a few things, like the map when starting a flight. I hope I have this right as information is coming from a lot of places. We will know on July 27th with the SU5 release? Gonna be a busy Tuesday for MS/Asobo and all of us 🙂

1 hour ago, robcap said:

How do you know? Is there an Asobo statement somewhere? I also would like to see some xbox goodies in the pc version. There are also a lot of newbies in the pc version of the sim.

Maybe someone can point to an Asobo statement, where they explain the features in SU5.

All the Xbox goodies are coming to PC, minus DX12 (because it still needs more testing on PC). According to them, there's very little (if at all) performance improvement to be expected from DX12, all the improvements are related to other optimisations they had to do for Xbox. 

They explain this in detail in the latest Dev Q&A video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdhEbrNsBF0

They also mention that DX12 is not going to be included in the next update for PC.

Edited July 10, 20214 yr by pstrub

1 hour ago, robcap said:

How do you know? Is there an Asobo statement somewhere? I also would like to see some xbox goodies in the pc version. There are also a lot of newbies in the pc version of the sim.

I remember taking off from Meighs back in the day in FS4, having absolutely no clue how to navigate to another airport. The learning curve was very steep.

So a bit more tutorials will help anyone. And thos discovery flights, and the land anywhere funtion sound like a lot of fun.

Maybe someone can point to an Asobo statement, where they explain the features in SU5.

Here is a good place to start...

https://www.flightsimulator.blog/2021/07/01/developer-interview/