I have said this several times on the forum. Flight Simulator is being developed by hundreds of people. We have the capacity to develop helicopters. The development of helicopters will not affect other areas of the simulator. There are developer groups, each group has its own area. Don’t think that all developers are working on optimization, for example …
The helicopter’s wish list grows daily. This way, the developer can at least see how active a community of thousands of people is. Helicopters are moving further and further
In my opinion, the future is in Flight Simulator. Helicopter for canaan. Wonderful visuals, which are more beautiful month by month … All you need is a good helicopter physics, and you need helicopters.
I am pleased to see that Sérgio Costa has taken the lead in the community on the forum. Thank you for your work.
It’s not, really. Asobo has a bit less than 140 employees and they work on other games, not just MSFS. From what I know Microsoft itself doesn’t have a lot of people working on the title either. I would be surprised if they had 100 people directly involved in development. It’s not impossible, but I would be surprised if that was the number.
In software development things do have an impact on each other. It’s called dependencies.
It would make no sense to work on helicopters right now when there are dependencies that need to be corrected and improved. Only when some of the basic features are stable it makes sense to build helicopters on top of it. Building on top of a flawed base would bring grief and could possibly get the developers into a dead end. Decisions such as “do we hack this or do it all over again” could eventually have to be made and, usually, the decision is to go forth (and hack stuff). And then we get flaws on top of flaws, which is not good at all. For anyone.
Like I had the chance to tell you by email, I’ve been working for the helicopter flight simulation community for the past 5 years. I haven’t “taken the lead” on anything and most certainly haven’t started now.
I just made a few posts here recently, to correct some information that was posted here about HTR. My work with helicopter simming has been far more extensive and broader than making some posts on the MSFS forums and most of that work is invisible for most people.
Having all this said, I will repeat myself, but I don’t think pressing Microsoft is not beneficial right now. We need Asobo to stabilize the sim, fix what needs to be fixed and then build helicopters on top of that base. It’s good to show MS and Asobo that we are together and we are waiting for them, but we need to let them do their stuff.
Software development is very hard and MSFS is a darn complex piece.
My background as a developer helps me in keeping some perspective but I also think a lot of people in the community does not have the same history as some of the “old-timers” have. Sims always took time to mature. FSX survived for years because it was a mature software (with some issues, yes, but it was the product of years of evolution and improvement).
X-Plane is what it is after going through the same process. Same as DCS (it comes from Flanker and it took years to come to what it is – and it still has issues).
Can Microsoft and Asobo still not do a good job? Of course. Everything can happen. But I think we need to let them do their best and wait patiently for things to fall into place. We’ll be here to help them when the time comes and they know that.
Having it tried using the XBox GamePass for PC, I decided that I wouldn’t buy it anytime soon anyway even if helicopters were there. It would make the sim more attractive, of course, but the whole product is frankly in the very early stage which doesn’t seem appealing to me. Selling it as an early access title would be honest and early access is what I don’t like.
But as Sergio has correctly mentioned, it needs time to mature. The time will show if Asobo has what it takes to improve the sim or not.
The best in the visual world. It will be perfect in half a year. I’m just using this. Finally a simulator where the visuals are perfect and not spotted, cube ground texture.
Agreed. There are some here that don’t understand that, and have the modern “I want it, and I want it now!” attitude. This is not the time to press Asobo for helos, it is the time to collectively take a step back, and give them a little breathing room.
Made these a few months ago just as some hopes for future mission content. Of course I want every helicopter under the sun but that’s not possible.
A few notable wants would be a Robinson for some flight training missions, an AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin (in any form really as long as it’s got lift & winch capabilities) and a Eurocopter-AS350B2. I think they offer a good variety of capabilities/sizes etc.
The bell 525 would be cool, but I hope they will keep the ugly 505 in the attic… Seriously, I cannot understand anyone who would buy this “come on engineers, what is the cheapest B206 knock-off you can give me” over a nicely built Airbus H-120…
Minimally higher purchase, but much more baggage space and I am pretty sure it also flies better. And, whoever has seen an Eurocopter/Airbus helicopter from up close: compared to a Bell it looks like you got a Lada vs a Mercedes.
When I saw the 505 for the first time, my reaction also was the same. But then I saw a video about the Bell 505 compared to the Robinson R66 by Pilot Yellow. The 505 is a cool helicopter. The shape has since grown on me.
Another very cool looking new helicopter is the Hill HX50. Would be nice to have that one in 2022.
considering the collaboration with Airbus, I would think/hope we would see the G2 Guimbal for training, the H125 for more training, the H160 for VIP and the H225 for offshore.
the 101 and LH aircraft could be good too and I would love to have a 139/169/189 but lets see.
as Sikorsky is owned by Lockheed Martin and they have the P3D platform, they might not have interest in sharing their IP with MS and Asobo. which leaves out the H500, S92 ect
which then leaves Bell for the 525 and 505 and 206 which are also great machines.
but considering the announced collabs I would put my pennies in the Airbus Helicopter jar
miss that!