Hello all
I’ve now spoken to PMDG, Milviz and VRS and asked why on earth the production of good aircraft for MSFS is so slow. All of them claim that the MSFS SDK is nowhere near developed or mature enough to reproduce their aircraft models in MSFS, Milviz, for instance, claims that there is not now, nor ever, tp be a facility for reproducing the afterburner for, say, their Phantoms. All seem to indicate that they blame Asobo for not sufficently getting their act together or talking to them and so on so to have the SDK ready for them yet. I find it all very frustrating. What does everybody thinK?,
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Are Milviz talking about the SDK, which I see as the way to access sim features and the documentation describing it, or are they talking about limitations in the simulation engine itself? Lack of afterburner support could be either one or the other.
Here is the quote from Jonathon at Milviz. What do you make of it?
‘Quite simple. The MSFS SDK is simply nowhere near stable enough to devote our time or effort to actually bringing anything out for it. Same reason PMDG is not ready. And military aircraft with afterburners are not likely to appear in MSFS.’
Translation – “The MSFS SDK doesn’t do things the way we WANT them to do things, so we’re going to take our ball and go home!”
I’ll be the first to admit that the SDK is, shall we say, a “work in progress”, but there are developers out there (FlyByWire, anyone?) who seem to be doing just fine bringing “complex” aircraft to MSFS.
Sorry, but I really just read his comment as them not WANTING to, rather than not being able to…
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My trouble is that I simply don’t understand the technicalities so I f8nd it difficult to comment really although I have left him with the question as to whether there is some work-around, and I remembered that as BETA tester someone putting the question as to whether ther there would eventually be military aircraft and the answer was yes, which would suggest that afterburner will arrive too?
The “developers” doing stuff currently are just hacking into the existing airplanes, hence their mods stop working after sim updates. The SDK is supposed to provide a platform allowing creation and development without hacking. It currently does not and nobody knows when it will do. Realsimgear for example hacked the .xml files and as of the last update their stuff stopped working. Ask Siminnovations what they think about current state, response will not be pretty.
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Not sure that’s 100% accurate or fair. Flybywire is making an A380 which isn’t in the sim yet, so once that occurs I think we’ll know if the SDK is up to par or not?
Flybywire announced that they “will be developing” a freeware A380. PMDG also announced they will be developing aircraft for MS. Let me know when both are done using currently available tools.
It is a statement that does not mean anything at all, is my take… Taken literally it is demonstrably wrong, there are already aircraft with afterburners flying in MSFS.
It seems there is something they believe is missing in MSFS that is necessary for modeling aircraft with afterburners to the standard they aim for. But what that might be is just speculation unless they elaborate.
Maybe they are just talking about the supersonic speed issues, maybe the visual effects system does not support afterburner visualizations, maybe something in the engine modeling changed… Maybe it is temporary (simply not supported in the SDK yet), maybe it would require new feature development to the sim engine; who knows.
Just so you know: RSG is working and there was no hacking involved. Just using what the sim is able to provide, even though it might be not the most efficient solution sometimes 
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Yeah, no kidding. Do you mind providing me the list of G1000 variables you have used? I’d love to update my G1000 bezel in Air Manager to work with MSFS.
The game is not even an alpha IMO, the core system is still in development for what I see, they are using legacy code, also for what I see. Basically they have old code living with new code for the moment, that tells me the game is still in full development and the big systems we want are still in their early days. That is why so many bugs and changes with every update. Also, they need to get experience doing this kind of system. Everything is normal. It will take time, a lot of time.
They have reasons behind every move, they partnered with people that could help them build a foundation, not the next Mars base, yet. When you do maths for example, you start adding and substracting numbers, not doing equations, it is the same here, it is just they are not saying it with such clarity, I guess.
Don’t be worried, be patient 
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I don’t know Air Manager…but if it uses SimConnect as interface to the other sims you will be out of luck with MSFS2020. As most of the G1000 functionality simply cannot be controlled via SimConnect. At least not now.
Agreed. I have uninstalled and will reinstall most likely in a year or so.
Yeah, lifecycle of today’s software is very different from software a 10 years old. Today companies make systems to live longer, since they are expensive. There are many games that have 5+ years and are still in development. This game will live for more than 10 years, but be sure that in 5+ years many important systems will change almost 100%. They are expensive. Anyways, have a nice day 
I don’t know how limiting (or not) the SDK may become for developers to create new planes, but I know from past experience that some of them are rather picky when choosing which platforms to continue developing for for reasons you’ll never know.
If they are picky , and I think there is something in that, then it us up to tge community to pressurise them without posts and our money. One of the reasons I spoke to them on the matter is because with what is the biggest ever initial take up of a flight sim yet, t(one who were first would make allot of money and I couldn’t understand how so few of them were not more interested in going for it. I remeber those companies that didn’t follow the community from FS2004 to FSX, they basically withered away. But there is also the question on whether we should, as a community, be pushing Asabo more in this direction. If developers are saying they cannot use the SDK to do what they need to do then the community can show its desire for tge direction of tge sim through tge forums. Below is Robert Randazzo of PMDG who took tge time to be a bit more detailed and positive.
Here is Robert Randazzo - firstly there is my question:
With regard to the slow progress of the 737, my impression is that the developers of models that have more sophisticated systems that have to implemented are having to wait for the MSFS SDK to mature. Is that right I’m PMDG’s case? and as I’ve just stated something that I don’t understand in the least, can you explain to me what that might mean in less technical terms. Thank you.
Neil G
‘Neil- You are mostly correct. I haven’t gone into much detail on the specifics because I don’t want anyone to be able to warp my words around and turn them into a weapon to use against the good folks at Asobo. (I know, I know… that would never happen in the simming community! LOL) The MSFS platform still needs a number of things before we can engage in serious development involving millions of lines of code… but it is getting closer. - RSR’
In addition to the responses you got, I think the experience with Carenado is a good hint. They have probably picked up a lot of sales by being so early, but there is also no shortage of “Carenado sucks” posts on the forum because of the issues they have had after MSFS updates.
Developers need to weigh short-term sales against potential brand damage due to such issues, and whether that brand damage is brief or longer term. They also need to factor in the negative work that results from developing for a moving target and implementing the same thing several times in different ways as the platform changes and decide if the additional work still allows the project to be profitable.
I am not at all surprised that different developers come to different conclusions in that regard due to their different circumstances and different perceptions.
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FSX and P3D and FS9 before gave us the ability to fine tune supersonic flight models and jet engine characteristics. From what I’ve seen this is currently not possible in MSFS to a degree where it’s realistic enough. They may get there, but the lack of anything supersonic in the initial offering tells me that at point of release they were only interested in general and commercial aviation, not military fast jets. My opinion of course, and we will no doubt one day see fast jets with accurately modelled jet engine characteristics, but until that time, it’s going to be props and slow jets.
it’s really different indeed, but afaik it’s already pretty great. Custom systems aren’t harder than before.
i don’t think we should care about supersonic aircraft / small details, the most important thing is DOCUMENTATION