June 13th, 2024 - Development Update - Microsoft Flight Simulator

This week’s Screenshot Challenge winner is Forum user KnackBretzel! If you’re interested in participating in our weekly Screenshot Challenges, check out the details in the Community section below!

During last weekend’s Xbox Games Showcase on June 9, we revealed a new trailer for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and also announced the release date: November 19, 2024. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 will be launching simultaneously on all platforms (PC/MS Store, PC/Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox Cloud Gaming) and will be available Day One on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass. In case you have not yet seen the trailer, you can watch it below:

Earlier today, we released an update to the Douglas C-47D Skytrain, part of the Famous Flyer 9 bundle which launched last week. The update is available via the in-sim Content Manager, and you can find the release notes on our forums here.

Coming up on Monday, June 17, we’re excited to host a special Community Fly-In livestream on our Twitch channel featuring guest co-hosts Jon Ostrower and Thomas Nield, co-founders of Yawman. Jon is a veteran journalist who previously covered the aviation industry for the Wall Street Journal. He is now the editor-in-chief of The Air Current and co-host of The Air Show podcast. Thomas formerly worked as a consultant for Southwest Airlines and now teaches Aviation Safety at the University of Southern California. We’re thrilled to welcome both Jon and Thomas as guests on our channel! As with all of our Community Fly-Ins, this is an open event, and all sim pilots are welcome to join. Full details can be found in the Community section below. (Note: this event was originally planned for Tuesday, June 11 but has been rescheduled for Monday, June 17.)

Last but certainly not least, next week many members of the Microsoft Flight Simulator team will be at FlightSimExpo in Las Vegas, Nevada! If you’re attending in-person, be sure to stop by our booth to speak with our team. We love meeting you and talking about flight simulation! While you’re at the booth, you can also try your hand at some in-sim challenges. We’ll be giving away many fantastic prizes to the top scorers throughout the weekend. You can find us in booth 502, the biggest booth on the convention floor, so it’ll be impossible to miss us.

Announced earlier this week, the Microsoft Flight Simulator team will be presenting two panel discussions during FlightSimExpo. The first starts at 3pm Vegas time (2200 UTC) on Saturday, June 22. In this presentation, Jorg and Seb will give an update on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The second presentation will have members of our Marketplace team sharing business insights of the in-game Marketplace and providing an introduction to the MSFS2024 Marketplace. This session starts at 12:30pm Vegas time (1930 UTC) on Sunday, June 23. For those who aren’t attending FSExpo in-person, both sessions will be streamed live as they happen on both our official Twitch channel and official YouTube channel. We wish to offer our sincere thanks to the FlightSimExpo organizers for allowing us to stream these sessions to the many simmers around the world who wouldn’t otherwise be able to see these presentations.

Also to celebrate FSExpo, we’ll soon be hosting some product giveaways on two of our social platforms! If you’re not already following us on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, make sure you do so for your chance to win some prizes! Full details and contest entry instructions will be posted on Twitter and Facebook when the giveaways start.

Finally, since so many members of our team will be attending FSExpo, there will be no Development Update blog post next Thursday (June 20). We’ll see you again on June 27!

– MSFS Team

Development Update

Development Roadmap

Feedback Snapshot

Click here for the web-friendly version of the Feedback Snapshot.

SDK UPDATE

Asobo

No update

Working Title / MSFS Avionics Framework

No update

Marketplace

We are excited to announce our first ever Top-Rated Aircraft Sale to celebrate planes with highest ratings on the Marketplace!

This sale is a first of its kind that highlights our community’s favorite content and will run from June 9^th through June 16^th.

Additional details:

Developers of the top-rated 50 planes were invited to participate.
The list of 50 was based on the Aircraft section in the Marketplace, sorted by Best Rating.
1^st party content and non-plane content such as liveries and sound packs were not included.
Products that would not be live on the Marketplace for 30 days as of the start of the sale were not included.
- The list was generated from Marketplace data as of May 23^rd.
Best Rating sorting algorithm in the Marketplace applies the Wilson score.
- Wilson score weighs average rating along with number of ratings.
- This sorting is different from pure telemetry-based, which goes by average rating exclusively.
If a developer declines an invitation for their plane(s) to participate in the sale, we forfeit the corresponding spot(s).
- We don’t go down to the next plane in the list.
- For this reason, there may be fewer than 50 planes in the sale.

Marketplace Releases

Click here for the web-friendly version of the Marketplace Update.

There are 64 new and 76 updated products in this week’s Marketplace Update.

Released Earlier: 2 UPDATED Products: 1 ON PC, 1 ON XBOX
	Updated on PC and Xbox

Released Monday, June 10: 13 NEW PRODUCTS: 9 ON PC, 4 ON XBOX
New on PC	New on PC	New on PC
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC	New on PC	New on PC and Xbox

Released Thursday, June 13: 51 NEW PRODUCTS: 25 ON PC, 26 ON XBOX
New on PC	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on Xbox
New on Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox	New on PC and Xbox
	New on PC and Xbox

Released Monday, June 10: 34 UPDATED PRODUCTS: 19 ON PC, 15 ON XBOX
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC	Updated on PC
	Updated on PC and Xbox

Released Thursday, June 13: 40 UPDATED PRODUCTS: 19 ON PC, 21 ON XBOX
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on Xbox	Updated on PC
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox	Updated on PC and Xbox
	Updated on PC and Xbox

Marketplace Backlog

Current Backlog: 296 Total

BACKLOG: NEW PRODUCTS

Content Type	In MS Processing	In MS Testing	In 3P Testing	Total
	*Testing Status*
Aircraft	10	0	6	16
Mission	6	6	98	110
Scenery	17	1	2	20
Livery	2	0	13	15
Airport	11	2	22	35
Other	13	3	17	33
Total	59	12	158	229

BACKLOG: UPDATED PRODUCTS

Content Type	In MS Processing	In MS Testing	In 3P Testing	Total
	*Testing Status*
Aircraft	18	0	4	22
Mission	0	0	2	2
Scenery	4	0	1	5
Livery	2	1	11	14
Airport	7	3	6	16
Other	6	2	0	8
Total	37	6	24	67

THIRD PARTY UPDATE

Third Party Update
- As of 06/09, we have now approved 291 (+5) third parties into the in-sim marketplace and – so far 232 (+1) have released 3,704 products on PC (+35) and 3,456 on Xbox (+37).
- In total, 4,540 products (+24) have already been released in 3^rd party stores and the in-sim marketplace. Beyond that, another 798 products (-17) from 3^rd party developers are in production (329 announced, 469 unannounced). In total, over 5,338 3^rd party products (+7) have either been released or are in development.
- Airports:
  - 2,408 airports (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 2,203 airports (+1) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 1,696 airports (+1) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    - 107 airports (+0) beyond the released airports have been announced.
    - 98 airports (+0) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an airport is in production.
- Aircraft:
  - 831 aircraft (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 407 aircraft (+3) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 326 aircraft (+4) have been released in the in-sim PC marketplace.
    - 310 aircraft (+3) have been released in the in-sim Xbox marketplace.
    - 201 aircraft (=1) beyond the released aircraft have been announced.
    - 223 aircraft (-1) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an aircraft is in production.
- Scenery:
  - 1,159 scenery packs (+4) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 1,126 scenery packs (+9) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 692 scenery packs (+9) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    - 20 scenery packs (+0) beyond the released scenery have been announced.
    - 13 scenery packs (-5) are not announced but the dev let us know that scenery is in production.
- Mission Packs:
  - 436 mission packs (+0) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 372 mission packs (+6) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 311 mission packs (+6) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    - 0 mission packs (+0) beyond the released missions have been announced.
    - 64 mission packs (-6) are not announced, but the dev let us know that they are in production.
- Livery Packs:
  - 466 livery packs (+1) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 405 livery packs (+5) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 396 livery packs (+5) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    - 1 livery pack (+0) beyond the released scenery has been announced.
    - 60 livery packs (-4) are not announced, but the dev let us know that scenery is in production.
- Ships & Watercraft:
  - 38 ships & watercraft (+0) are either released or are in various stages of development.
    - 27 ships (+0) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
    - 22 ships (+0) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
    - 0 ships (+0) beyond the released ships have been announced.
    - 11 ships (+0) are not announced, but dev let us know that ships are in production.

Community

Community Fly-In Friday

The Community Fly-In Friday World Tour continues!

After a break last week to tour the beaches of Normandy and drop paratroopers on Sainte-Mère-Église, we’re back to the World Tour this week for another flight along Africa’s Mediterranean coastline!

Picking up from our last stoppage point, we’ll depart from Tunis then fly along a generally easterly heading as we make our way across the border into Libya for a full-stop landing at Tripoli. This should be another fantastic group flight with plenty of gorgeous Mediterranean views!

Event details are available here. All are welcome to participate. Please note there will be no Community Fly-In on June 21st due to the team attending FlightSimExpo!

Yawman x MSFS collaboration

In this event, we’re offering participants their choice of two exciting flight plans, each starting at different locations but converging for a full stop landing at Seattle, Washington.

Joining us as a guest co-host will be Jon Ostrower, co-founder of Yawman, editor-in-chief of The Air Current, and co-host of The Air Show podcast. As a journalist with many years experience covering the aviation industry, Jon will be sure to entertain and educate viewers with his expert knowledge of the business of flying.

Also joining is Thomas Nield, another co-founder of Yawman and an Instructor of Aviation Safety at the University of Southern California. Previously, Thomas worked in the airline industry as a consultant for Southwest Airlines.

We’re absolutely thrilled to welcome both Jon and Thomas to the channel!

Event details are available here. Feel free to pick one of the two flight plan options and join in!

Community Video

With the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 trailer shown at the Xbox Showcase this past weekend, we’ve seen many amazing videos from content creators breaking down the trailer and giving their impressions.

For this week’s Community Video we join Pilot Studd, who takes a closer look at the new trailer, concisely giving details not only as to what they’re noticing in the video, but also their potential hopes and predictions as to what the new simulator will hold!