Last week's news update for Microsoft Flight Simulator brought information regarding the imminent Alpha 5, details regarding Microsoft's partnership with NAVBLUE, and more. This time around, there is even more news to go around, with a fair few deliverables coming under discussion, alongside the usual Alpha release information.
With the start of this month, the focus is retained by Alpha 5, with the latest version headed for a now confirmed release date of July 9, exactly one week from now. The Flight Simulator team may opt to make release notes for this update available in a separate post next week, shortly before the regular news update is unveiled, or combine both pieces of news into a single blog post. Both approaches have been utilized with different Alpha variants in the past.
The Closed Beta is also slated for a release in July. The official release date for it will be revealed next Thursday. Development focus will shift to the beta once Alpha 5 has been pushed out next week. As has been a frequent case in the recent past, new Alpha invitations have been sent out this week as well, so do keep an eye out for those.
Wrapping up the trio of recent Partnership Series announcements, the spotlight finally arrives upon FlightAware. Detailed information regarding how "real-time and predictive flight insights" are being collected by the aviation intelligence company, and how they will come into play in-game has been provided.
Jorg Neumann, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, commented on this partnership in the following manner:
"Microsoft Flight Simulation’s team is fully dedicated to bring to simmers the most accurate replica of the world ever seen from a plane perspective. Thanks to FlightAware data, we are thrilled to be able to populate this world with the actual aviation traffic all around the world, whether it be on ground or in the air. Out of the box, Flight Aware data will allow simmers to fly sharing their air space with the current air traffic but also to check arrivals and departure from airports, select any flight to see its fly plan and even have the possibility to, virtually off course, take controls."
The latest Feedback Snapshot, denoted as v#05.01, is also available in the Insider Area. It may arrive in a couple of weeks time to the general public, though there has been no fixed schedule in this regard in the past. And finally, some welcoming news for those who are interested in discussing various aspects of the game with other players at length - the official Discord channel for Microsoft Flight Simulator is now open. At the time of writing, the member count for this community stands at over 10,000.
