So far this year, the news update schedule for the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator has been relatively haphazard. Instead of weekly updates like in previous months, there were only three briefs in January, due to the arrival of the holiday season. Heading into February, the first week was skipped, and it looked as though there was no news arriving last Thursday as well. However, the Flight Simulator team ended up putting one out a bit later in the week.
For those who haven"t been keeping up with these updates, the Alpha invitation process had formally commenced last month and the first Feedback Snapshot had been revealed to the general public, among other updates.
Today brings the unveiling of the next two episodes in the Feature Discovery Series, another round of Alpha invitations, and an update regarding SDK rollouts. For Insiders, Feedback Snapshot v2 and a development roadmap preview has also been showcased in the Insider Area.
As far as the Feature Discovery Series is concerned, Episode 6 focuses on airports in the Flight Simulator world, while Episode 7 takes an in-depth look at the instrument flight rules (IFR). The former will be coming next week, while the latter is scheduled for a March 5 release. Notably, Episode 7 was previously planned to arrive in February.
Although Alpha invitations were initially sent out nearing the end of January, Microsoft has opted for another round of these from February 13-18. Those who applied but missed out during the first session of recruitment are advised to be on the lookout for any such emails. There is also some exciting news regarding the next Alpha update; improvements for existing in-game tools, as well as the availability of a new aircraft editor that allows configuration tuning for aircraft parameters, have been announced.
Currently, over 30 of Microsoft"s partners have access to the Flight Simulator SDK. The number of advisories is planned to be increased and those who have not received access yet are urged to "hang in there" as the process nears completion. For next week"s update, we can expect the full unveiling of Episode 6 in the Feature Discovery Series, perhaps alongside new versions of the development roadmap and Feedback Snapshot.