18 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I just want confirmation that they will be replacing those annoying desert brown Bing textures that cover a large section of southern England with more realistic imagery, and that it will be soon. I want England to look like England, not Saudi Arabia.

I use Reshade. It boots up with MS2024, but not in a separate window. It is invisible. Push the hotkey and your chosen graphic mod shades appear. Push it again and you're back to normal. It does steel a few fps. About 8%. Example: if you are flying at 50 fps when reshade appears it will drop to about 46.

 

I seem to recall Jorg reciting the discovery, and planning stages leading up to MSFS 2020.  if they were going to go thru with it, there had to be some form of long term commitment to this massive project or else it’s a no go.  I believe the promise was for 10 years?

question is, is it on a contract? Can it be broken because of head personnel changes at MIcrosoft?  When did the 10 years start?

With all that’s invested and it being a prime foundation of a Microsoft game, with Xbox as a centrepiece and recent PlayStation addition, I am pretty sure it’s not going away anytime soon or near-midterm future. 

Best to be cautiously optimistic rather than worried, that another significant feature has been reworked outside of just updating the sim for bug fixing and performance optimisations.  I‘m hoping for big WX changes since XP made a move and it can be rather lacking at times. A proper WX radar that 3rd parties can integrate too.  

Guess we will all find out something at FS weekend what the roadmap looks like. 

 

What are the legal grounds for a cancellation of further development of Microsoft Flight Simulator? Many of us have spent a great deal of money (on the simulator itself, and numerous addons/hardware etc), so would Microsoft be obliged to keep the servers operational for at least a number of years?

2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

What are the legal grounds for a cancellation of further development of Microsoft Flight Simulator? Many of us have spent a great deal of money (on the simulator itself, and numerous addons/hardware etc), so would Microsoft be obliged to keep the servers operational for at least a number of years?

Flight simmers coming to gripes with a GaaS.

They are none. Currently there’s no legal grounds to enforce game developers to keep servers operational. Just look at the more recently shutdown “The Crew” or the PlayStation failure of “Marathon”
 

The only solace is the ongoing initiative “stop killing games” but no legislation has been introduced for that yet.

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

What are the legal grounds for a cancellation of further development of Microsoft Flight Simulator? Many of us have spent a great deal of money (on the simulator itself, and numerous addons/hardware etc), so would Microsoft be obliged to keep the servers operational for at least a number of years?

There is no obligation whatsoever, but when they are finished with it, they could probably pass it over to someone else, like the way suddenly passed FSX over to Dovetail.
I am hoping we are a long way from that, especially as they just opened up to the PlayStation, but it only takes a change in leadership somewhere at the top for things to develop quickly, just like it did with FSX.

The thing is, just in terms of the twitch developer sessions, they know they have created an unusual period of silence that is being talked about, and with no future dates being announced, what could be the reason? 
Even if they said 'we are dropping them to quarterly', that would be some news at least, but by not communicating at all, they know it can create an air of unease, so why do that knowingly?

Hopefully we will get some news and a roadmap for 2026 quite soon, even if involves some different arrangements going forward.
As long as the sim survives and Jorg Neumann is alright, I am not too fussed about who develops it. 
This goes hand-in-hand with the latest beta going painfully slowly compared to the last one, especially regarding releases to fix regressions.
The previous beta had two or three times more updates at this stage - I hope that isn't a sign of some disruption, but I must admit, all this taken together does make me feel uneasy.

I actually think they're busy working on the next version of MSFS hence why there's no need for a dev update.

 

9 minutes ago, usernamerequired said:

I actually think they're busy working on the next version of MSFS hence why there's no need for a dev update.

 

  I take it you are joking?  Another version less than 18 months after the previous, and another one to pay for?  No logic in that, plus if they were, they would be bursting to announce it.

29 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

  I take it you are joking?  Another version less than 18 months after the previous, and another one to pay for?  No logic in that, plus if they were, they would be bursting to announce it.

We had no idea 2024 was in development until they dropped a trailer out of nowhere. And it’s not too far fetched that they’re already working on the next version, especially with AI rapidly advancing, which will cut development times.

I do not want to see another version until 2028.

10 minutes ago, usernamerequired said:

We had no idea 2024 was in development until they dropped a trailer out of nowhere. And it’s not too far fetched that they’re already working on the next version, especially with AI rapidly advancing, which will cut development times.

Yeah that's still nothing like what happened with the transition from 2020 to 2024. We saw no tangible slowdown in communication or development which is precisely why the announcement was a surprise. What's likely going on is Jorg and company are busy working with new management, as someone else pointed out. Way to early in the game for Asobo to be putting significant resources into a new sim. 

I certainly hope for the continued development of Microsoft Flight Simulator as I’ve used it since FS98 was brand new and believe it will continue, but I’m also excited about the advances XP12 and even AFS4 have experienced.

If a gap appears, the market will come in and develop new products or improve existing ones to take care of our collective need to flight sim.

My speculation for recent lack of Q&A sessions: given that SU5 beta just started and like SU4 mostly focusing on fixes and stabilization, they probably won't have a dev Q&A until they start to focus on bigger fixes/rework and new features (maybe >= SU5). And like Krakin says above, they are likely working out plans with new management currently.

In any case, MSFS is unlike any of their other entertainment products given its use of, and showcasing of, core MS services like Azure, AI, etc.. and it's a huge success story in terms of the simmer user-base and 3rd party add-on market and uptake by 3rd party devs (a majority of which are either exclusively developing for MSFS or mostly focusing on it, with even some non-traditional devs getting into it i.e. Toliss). We have tonnes of devs pumping out all kinds of aircraft and other add-ons, with new ones starting up (i.e. Vector being the recent example). With a for-profit business anything can happen of course, but the business indicators are just not there currently for the sim platform to be ditched by MS.

Also, if they truly are wanting to go silent or avoid Q&As/etc, why still appear in person at a big show like FSWeekend in a couple of weeks? (https://flightsimweekend.com/exhibitors/) .. just makes no sense.

And FWIW, @SeedyL's post on this topic: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/2026-02-26-weekly-briefing-discussion/759090/17 🙂 
 

Edited March 1Mar 1 by lwt1971

1 minute ago, lwt1971 said:

My speculation for recent lack of Q&A sessions: given that SU5 beta just started and like SU4 mostly focusing on fixes and stabilization, they probably won't have a dev Q&A until they start to focus on bigger fixes/rework and new features (maybe >= SU5). And like Krakin says above, they are likely working out plans with new management currently.

In any case, MSFS is unlike any of their other entertainment products given its use of, and showcasing of, core MS services like Azure, AI, etc.. and it's a huge success story in terms of the simmer user-base and 3rd party add-on market and uptake by 3rd party devs (a majority of which are either exclusively developing for MSFS or mostly focusing on it, with even some non-traditional devs getting into it i.e. Toliss). We have tonnes of devs pumping out all kinds of aircraft and other add-ons, with new ones starting up (i.e. Vector being the recent example). With a for-profit business anything can happen of course, but the business indicators are just not there currently for the sim platform to be ditched by MS.

Also, if they truly are wanting to go silent or avoid Q&As/etc, why still appear in person at a big show like FSWeekend (https://flightsimweekend.com/exhibitors/) .. just makes no sense.

And FWIW, @SeedyL's post on this topic: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/2026-02-26-weekly-briefing-discussion/759090/17 🙂 
 

Thanks for your positive views and these are good assumptions that make sense. Fingers crossed! If any community managers pop in over here at Avsim, they should take some of this feedback up the chain!

7 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

What are the legal grounds for a cancellation of further development of Microsoft Flight Simulator?

As bobcatt000 mentioned MSFS is SaaS and there is no language in the EULA that commits Microsoft to keep the title operational. The Microsoft Services Agreement, which governs MSFS, explicitly states that Microsoft has the absolute right to modify or discontinue services, terminate access, and change features or functionality at its sole discretion; and we all signed up for that when we purchased the title. There is a provision that it provide notice, but not how much notice. Generally they first delist the title from sale and then announce a gradual phase out: no updates, no support and then deactivation. But it is often only a matter of months. I do not think passing this to another developer is viable, given the deep integration with Azure and the cost another entity would need to pay for the streaming infrastructure. 

That said this seems to fall into the category of much ado about nothing. Maybe a slow news day? There has been no indication of lessening commitment to the title, just a possible change in the pace and nature of communication. And that could be for so many legitimate and understandable reasons. As was said, if the word had come down that MSFS was ending I am not sure they would have launched an SU5 beta nor committed to be at a large European show and to be at FSExpo in June. Had Asobo layed off a good portion of their staff it almost certainly would have been reported but there is no credible evidence in any of the industry publications that this has happened, in fact, it appears their investment is continuing unabated. The very most one could surmise is that Asobo is changing its pace of communication and the way it interacts with developers, at the most.

Edited March 1Mar 1 by Cognita