April 22nd, 2021 Development Update - Microsoft Flight Simulator

“Windmills at Kinderdijk” – Screenshot by Shameloc, winner of this week’s NVIDIA Screenshot Challenge

This week in Microsoft Flight Simulator we hosted our very first SDK Q&A! Click here to watch the video back and feel free to leave any feedback about your thoughts on the format here. We are gearing up for the release of the Just 103 Solo plane next week and can’t wait to get you in the seat of this ultralight aircraft.

A quick thank you to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for choosing Microsoft Flight Simulator as the Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year in the D.I.C.E. Awards! We are extremely humbled and thankful to be chosen. Check out the thank you speech from Jorg Neumann and David Dedeine here.

– The MSFS team

DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

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FEEDBACK SNAPSHOT

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Key:

SU = Sim Update (3, 4, etc.)

WU = World Update

ASAP = As Soon as Possible

TBD = To Be Determined

Several Releases = Fixes will come over a series of updates

Ongoing Fixes = An item we will continually be working on

Planned = Scheduled to be worked on

Under Investigation = The team is currently looking into the issue

Not Planned = We will likely not work on this

Started = Work as started on this item

THIRD PARTY UPDATE

As of 04/17, we have now approved 149 (+0) third parties to sell their content in our in-sim marketplace and, so far, 79 (+4) have released 318 products (+12).
845 products (+19) have already been released in 3^rd party stores and the in-sim marketplace. Beyond that, another 312 products (+8) from 3^rd party developers are in production (183 announced, 129 unannounced). In total, over 1,163 3^rd party products (+33) are either released or are in development.
Airports:
- 740 airports (+19) are either released or are in various stages of development.
  - 542 airports (+14) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
  - 263 airports (+14) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
  - 91 airports (+4) beyond the released airports have been announced.
  - 107 airports (+1) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an airport is in production.
Aircraft:
- 129 aircraft (+3) are either released or are in various stages of development.
  - 31 aircraft (+1) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
  - 24 aircraft (+1) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
  - 76 aircraft (+2) beyond the released aircraft have been announced.
  - 22 aircraft (+0) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an aircraft is in production.
Scenery:
- 261 sceneries (+4) are either released or are in various stages of development.
  - 245 sceneries (+3) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
  - 22 sceneries (+2) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
  - 16 sceneries (+1) beyond the released scenery have been announced.
Mission Packs:
- 27 mission packs (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
  - 27 mission packs (+1) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
  - 3 mission packs (+0) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
  - 0 mission packs (+0) beyond the released missions have been announced.

SDK UPDATE

Documentation
- We fixed the installation of the 3DS Max tools.
Dev Mode:
- In the Project Editor, we renamed the package inspector “+” button into “Add asset group”.
- In the Marketplace Data Editor, we fixed a crash when loading an empty thumbnail.
- We continue to polish the Visual Effect Editor and added a VisualEffectLib Wizard among other improvements.
- We fixed an issue where the simvar index was lost when loading a file.
- We updated the new “Release Notes” window.
- In the Scenery Editor, we fixed the issue where the ‘`’ character was filtered in taxiway sign content text entry.

MARKETPLACE

There are 16 new products and 18 updated products in the Marketplace today.

16 NEW PRODUCTS

18 UPDATED PRODUCTS

COMMUNITY SCREENSHOT CHALLENGE

Community Video

Obsidian Ant takes a look at Microsoft Flight Simulator’s performance on a RTX 3080 to see how close he can get to 60fps at 4k resolution.

SCREENSHOT CHALLENGE

This past week NVIDIA challenged you to take a screenshot from the France/Benelux update. The grand prize winner is shameloc and is feature above. Below are our 10 runner up choices! This week’s Screenshot Challenge: Peace and Quiet.

Last challenge’s Finalists: