Last week"s news update on Microsoft Flight Simulator primarily covered the imminent release of the second patch for the title. Although a soft release timeframe of 10 days was provided by the Flight Simulator team initially, the latest build - v1.8.3.0 - was released quicker than anticipated, a couple of days back. A slew of fixes and improvements were introduced through this patch.
Today, Microsoft has delivered updates regarding a bunch of different components, with the spotlight residing on a new development roadmap, further SDK improvements, and more.
For starters, the latest development roadmap stands at version 9.17, and showcases updates through November, as previously predicted. By the end of October, users can expect the Around the World series to have released six episodes. The third of these episodes has just been made available, and it showcases a look at various regions across the continent of Africa. More releases for the Feature Discovery Series are also expected in the same month. Moving on to November, meanwhile, Partnership Series releases and another development roadmap update should be at the forefront.
Moving on, functionality for the public SDK is being expanded in the following ways:
- Scenery Editor: Projected mesh normal rotation issues have been addressed and it is now possible to replace single models for scenery objects.
- Aircraft Editor: Several stability fixes and improvements have been made thanks to the input from the community.
- Particle Effects System: A new node-based particles effects system is in development and features more tunable parameters. The node graph editor got some usability improvements and support for generating ribbons has been added.
- WebAssembly: Addressed some usability issues (e.g. allowing single file recompilation) and are mostly concentrating on reducing developer iteration time and improving the debugging experience. Also enhanced the way file I/O requests from WASM modules work, improved WASM modules caching and fixed issues upon WASM module shutdown.
Microsoft has also appreciated the third-party developer interest in its title, stating that over 900 applications for the Marketplace Partner Program have been received so far.
And finally, rounding up the announcements for this week, the latest collaboration as part of the Partnership Series has been unveiled, with the details of Textron Aviation as a Microsoft Flight Simulator partner being showcased.
For next week, a mysteriously labeled "Update" deliverable - which could be pointing toward another patch - alongside more SDK content and yet another Partnership Series update can be looked forward to.