The next Dev Q&A is Today at 18:30Z

[FAZZ3 815]

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/read-first-dev-q-a-jan-26th

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

The Q&A is now complete, watch the VOD in here and Jayne's agenda in here.

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Quick Summary

The team can see from the telemetry that the playerbase had lots of fun with the GOTY edition and Reno Air Races, with some record-breaking engagement (twice as many people simming compared to the middle of 2021). They are very excited with the amount of quality of add-ons.

2022 Roadmap

World Update VII: Australia | World Update VIII: Iberia

Local Legend II: Fokker F.VII |  Local Legend III: Do J Wal

Famous Flyer I: Antonov AN-2 | Famous Flyer II: Beechcraft D17

May: Top Gun: Maverick | Fall: Gliders | Fall: Helicopters

A preview for the Australia World Update was demonstrated on stream, releasing on 31st January. 60 people working on this project, with new aerials and mesh data from Bing Maps, 3TB of data by Geospatial, as well as 94 POIs from Orbx. 4 hand-crafted airports, and 11 photogrammetry cities (a new team of 30 people at Microsoft has been set up to help them speed up the integration of photogrammetry). New discovery trips and bush trips by Perfect Flight can be expected too, along with the Fokker F.VII (they worked with Ellise Cristopher from Orbx on this).

The Antonov AN-2 is complete but they are still having licencing issues, so they might release the Beechcraft D17 first, along with Sim Update 8. Their new partner for this aircraft is Fernando Herrera from Carenado.

World Update 8 is Iberia. New 2m DEM for Spain, new aerials, 6 photogrammetry cities, 4 hand-crafted airports, 91 POIs from Gaya and missions by Perfect Flight. The Do J Wal will be released alongside too.

 

Sim Update 8 improvements

They are making propeller improvements to accommodate helicopters in the future, but they will also benefit three existing planes. They are easy to port so more of them will receive those improvements in the future. The lack of fast-moving surface simulation will be amended. The climbing properties will be made stronger, and propeller feathering now works properly. These effects are simulated natively, and not relying on legacy FSX code.

Sim Update 9 will introduce a new CFD airflow system which can be adjusted by plane makers. It will benefit climb, stall, propwash, wake turbulence and helicopter simulation.

 

Feedback Snapshot

The weather and terrain APIs are constantly under investigation.

Multiple screen functionality is part of the DirectX 12 implementation.

They want to dedicate someone into reworking the AI system because they're relying on inefficient FSX code right now.

Each bug report thread in the forum has multiple requests so it is difficult to provide a bigger explanation for the top bugs. The community team are investigating on how to improve this situation.

 

Q&A session

The developers from all over the world are constantly communicating via Discord. They are trying their best to pay attention and digest feedback. They have invited PMDG and others into SDK meetings. They are confident that complex airliners will be arriving over the next few months.

Live weather will not stop being a work-in-progress. They are working with new partners who better understand how METAR works. They have already pushed a server fix for the live weather going down for an hour every day.

They already have 43 planes on the Xbox Marketplace (68 on PC), with 12 pending release right now. WASM works as a sandbox for C++ code over security reasons, and differences in the implementation between the developer kit and retail version caused the PMDG DC-6 to not work on the Xbox (despite being tested for months). They have talked to the platform team who are committed to resolving this issue, but it might take a few more months.

They have created a DLSS prototype and they were positively surprised with its quality and performance improvement over the TAAU. It's working great and provides a huge GPU performance boost at higher resolutions. It will be part of the DirectX 12 implementation, which is being optimised on a different branch with several other prototype technologies (like multiple screens). They plan to merge these into the main branch with Sim Update 10 but it could take longer.

The Sim Update 8 beta is slated to start soon after World Update 7. Sim Update 9 is going to focus a lot on stability. They are actively trying to reproduce the performance reduction on longer flights and black screen issues. They need as much information as possible because these tests are very time-consuming. They are also doing their best to separate World Updates completely so that they don't interfere with Sim Update releases.

The issue with reduced performance when using pop-out panels is very complex and it does not affect all systems. They anticipate that Sim Update 8 will partially fix this.

Sim Update 8 will fix the issue with AI planes not taking off, but they think it's time that they start reworking parts of the AI logic significantly instead of constantly patching the legacy FSX code. They plan to bring more experts into the team to achieve this.

The propwash simulation is already working natively on planes, and they are looking into utilising this airflow system on terrain (later this year). Plane makers will have access to an API to adjust parameters.

They are continuing to invest into adding more and more airline liveries into the simulator, and slowly they are overcoming many difficulties but there is still much to be done, especially over memory concerns. They are aware of the way liveries can be created in the Forza games and investigating into something similar.

They don't have much control over third-party releases, so they are doing their best to remove friction (for example, by creating description texts and working on the localisation).

Replays consume memory and hard drive space so they are still investigating on how to implement them on the Xbox.

Working windshield wipers are being investigated, meetings between artists have occurred but the implementation is going to be time-consuming so it's going to be done at a later date (not in 2022).

Jörg says that 2022 will be the year of third-party planes, and less about massive content updates. They want to focus more on the core simulation, and they expect that tons of improvements will have been made by the end of this year.

The airflow visualisations will be available in developer mode for now, but it's not very optimised on the GPU so it would need more work before becoming a toggle for everyone.

The ATR 72 is still being worked on in co-operation with Hans (who might be brought back for an update), and currently the model looks awesome. They want it to be a high-quality release so they're not rushing it.

Sim Update 8 is going to have lots of VR improvements (but they don't have the exact list available). Some of the focus by the strike teams was lost during the holidays, so they are in a planning phase now. They have a surprise planned for 2023 which is really awesome.

They might investigate a toggle for the ghosting effect when planes are flying in close formation.

The Microsoft Store issues are being investigated, and Asobo are also trying to do their best on their side in order to reduce installation issues as much as possible. The Marketplace 2.0 is also already being tested, they think it's more functional and elegant.

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by ChaoticBeauty

[RichUK 474]

Thanks. Going to watch this one..

[Tuskin38 6,459]

Pre-stream has started

[Tuskin38 6,459]

Australia is the biggest World Update yet. 91 POIs (I think I heard that correctly), 11 photogrammetry cities, new imagery.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Tuskin38

[SubtotalGuide 133]

Half the agenda is once again just about promoting new content. This is supposed to be a developer Q&A.

[Tuskin38 6,459]

2 minutes ago, SubtotalGuide said:

Half the agenda is once again just about promoting new content.

Nothing wrong with that. It gets them the money so they can make the sim better.

The Q&A still gets a lot of time.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Tuskin38

[peroni 541]

What? Carenado is now an official partner 🙂
Fernando Herrera is one of the two founders of Carenado and I don't think we have ever seen or read much from him in the twenty years of their existance

Edited January 26, 2022 by peroni

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

World Update Iberia confirmed also

[David Roch 1,980]

Iberia, next WU after Oz!!

👍

[SubtotalGuide 133]

6 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

It gets them the money so they can make the sim better.

I'm still waiting for that to happen, making it better that is.

[Tuskin38 6,459]

3 minutes ago, SubtotalGuide said:

I'm still waiting for that to happen, making it better that is.

it has gotten better in some aspects with every sim update

 

They're improving propellers for aircaft as part of of the work up for Helicopters in the fall.

Feathering is a lot better. The propellers are now a separate model from the plane. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Tuskin38

[MarcG 2,929]

This is good stuff from Seb

[Tuskin38 6,459]

all these new air dynamics and all that are great.

[peroni 541]

Jorg: Martial, can you talk about weather and terrain API's ?
Martial: Uh, I was not prepared for that...

Is Martial ever prepared for anything? This was the top item in the wish list!

Edited January 26, 2022 by peroni