[BLOG] December 16th, 2021 Development Update

SeedyL3205 · December 16, 2021, 11:01pm

A plane flies over water near a city skyline

Screenshot by gopensgo291 (Forum)

2021 is coming to a close, and our team will be taking a short break. This will be the last Development Update until the new year. We hope you can spend time with your loved ones this holiday season and enjoy a much-needed break from the busyness of life! We have a unique piece of MSFS art we’d love to give away to a lucky member of the community - check out details on that below. Happy holidays and clear skies to all!

- MSFS TEAM -

DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP

We will provide an updated Development Roadmap in the new year.

FEEDBACK SNAPSHOT

Click here for the web-friendly version. To learn more about Accessibility in Microsoft Flight Simulator, click here.

KEY
SU = Sim Update (6, 7, 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 this issue
Not Planned = We will likely not work on this
Not Started = We have not begun investigation on this yet
Started = Development work as started on this item

SDK UPDATE

General:
- With holidays starting next week, the support provided on the DevSupport platform may experience some delays. Our team is taking some time off to enjoy the end-of-year celebrations. See you in 2022!
DevMode:
- We fixed some camera settings: translation could have aberrant value and rotation is never saved.
- Scenery Editor:
  - It is now possible to add Projected Meshes outside of airports!
  - We made the rotation of squared apron cumulative with the rotation of its texture, to avoid weird jumps of rotation when changing both rotation of the apron and rotation of the texture.
  - We fixed polygon-based objects (painted lines/area, aprons, light row) having incorrect altitude upon loading a Scenery file.
  - The right click popup doesn’t open anymore if you have no object selected.
  - We fixed the rectangle aprons that were not updating properly after rotating them and undoing this action.
- Visual Effects Editor:
  - We have reached a satisfying level of stability and a good amount of features available on this tool, so we decided to remove the BETA tag from it.
  - We now automatically select new nodes after a duplicate/copy&paste action.
  - We fixed the SimObjects names in the Spawner tab dropdown menu (they were previously displayed as numbers).
  - We fixed a crash when disconnecting or deleting one of several Emitters connected to a VisualEffect block when the effect is spawned.
  - We fixed the Emitter not working after being unlinked then linked again to the VisualEffect block.

MARKETPLACE UPDATE

There are 41 new and 13 updates products in the Marketplace today.

ART GIVEAWAY

In celebration of another year coming to an end with our amazing community, we are giving away this incredible re-creation of Microsoft Flight Simulator’s cover art.

This fantastic artwork was created by Mathew Mandala, A.K.A VegasSprayPaint. This handmade spray painting is one-of-a-kind, and we’re excited to give it away. It measures 22" x 18" (55.9 cm x 45.7 cm).

There are multiple ways to enter this giveaway, and you can enter once on each platform to increase your chances of winning. The giveaway runs from December 16th, 2021, to January 7th, 2022. One lucky winner will be selected at random from all entries received, and they will be announced during our weekly Community Fly-In on January 7th, 2022.

Microsoft Flight Simulator End Of The Year Giveaway

TWITCH UPDATE

We stream weekly on Twitch! Join us for a special final fly-in stream of the year this Friday, December 17th at 2000Z. For this week’s flight, we will be departing from Celle Air Base (ETHC) and flying across Germany, the Netherlands, and the North Sea on a calm winter’s night en route to our destination of RAF Lakenheath (EGUL) in the UK. All are welcome to participate! Click here for details.

Additionally, on Sunday, December 26 starting at 8am ET (1300Z), our Community Manager SeedyL will be leading the second annual Microsoft Flight Simulator Cannonball Run, flying from New York JFK to Los Angeles LAX in single-engine piston planes! Everyone is welcome to fly along for the entire duration or to join for a few individual stages. This is a charity fundraising event where we are trying to raise USD $10,000 for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on behalf of the Microsoft Flight Simulator community. For more information about how to participate, please click here.

COMMUNITY VIDEO

One of the reasons air travel is so safe is because in the rare occasions when there are safety incidents, details are shared widely within the aviation community so pilots can learn from the mistakes of others. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Air Safety Institute has recently started creating accident case study videos using Microsoft Flight Simulator to provide safety education to aviators, real and virtual alike. In this video, two experienced pilots flying a Beechcraft Bonanza depart from Aspen, Colorado but fail to take into account the effect high density altitude will have on their plane’s climb performance. This case study goes into great detail explaining what the pilots did wrong and what other pilots should do differently in this same situation to have a better outcome.

Viewer caution: this video uses Microsoft Flight Simulator to depict a real air incident that resulted in loss of life, but no graphic details are displayed. To protect their identities, the pilots are not named.

Watch here: Accident Case Study: Into Thin Air - YouTube

SCREENSHOT CHALLENGE

You can now submit your screenshot via Instagram and Twitter with [#MSFSchallenge] or the Weekly Forum Post This week’s screenshot challenge: Your Dream Vacation

This past week our Screenshot Challenge was “It’s a Bird!” Here are our runner ups this week: