Jorg introduce the 2022 roadmap- Timestamp
6 World updates
6 Local Legends
5 Famous flyers
6 Major releases
World Update VII: Australia trailer - Timestamp
New DEM and aerials will be available.
Jorg – Here’s a trailer of the World Update VII which will be release on January 31st at 1:00 PM Pacific Time. 60 people work on this, Bing maps provided aerials, they worked on integrating them. We receive 3 terabytes of data but half a million files all that was integrated. We work with Orbx which is an Australia based company. They know Australia inside out. Bing maps contributed in adding photogrammetry cities. We have a new team we set up here at Microsoft helping us. I’m very hopeful that we are going get more photogrammetry cities as we go throughout 2022. Perfect Flight added new missions so 5 landing challenges, 6 discovery flights, 5 Bush trips and Asobo Studio put everything together. It’s really looking cool and aside, it we added a local legend
Local legend trailer -Southern cross Timestamp
We choose this aircraft because Charles Kingsford Smith did amazing things with that plane, he did the Pacific crossing, and he is the most famous Australian aviator. We invited the actual creator for this plane: Elise Christopher.
Elise Christopher – Orbx - Timestamp
Elise - I’m business developer manager at Orbx and particularly for the Fokker F7. We have a team of roughly16 inhouse people and many external people helped with this. We had some issues with references and fortunately the house museum helped us out with all the references for the cockpit. We’ve worked very hard to get pictures. There are six variants of the plane: there’s two Southern Cross so we have the original cockpit that was flown by Smithy and we have a modern cockpit which has modern avionics. We have the Ski variant and the float variant as well.
It’s absolutely amazing for VFR flying. We also have other variants, we’ve done some transport variants (single engine motor) with special liveries. At the moment there’s arounds 11/12 liveries depending on the license. I’m fortunate to be able to get into the Henry Ford museum to actually do 3D scans, everything is millimetre perfect which is awesome. We loved working on this on this plane it’s been actually amazing.
Jorg – We also recreated the original missions. You’ll have very long Bush Trip. It took around 83h for Charles Smith to cross the pacific, and we have it. We want to celebrate this achievement.
Jayne – Make sure to join the Community Flying along with members of Orbx.
Famous Flyer #1 – Timestamp
Fernando Herrera – Carenado
Beechcraft MODEL 17 STAGGERWING – This is a beautiful aircraft with a lot of history! Some call it Cadillac of the Air.
After the war, this plane has been converted into a civilian aircraft. Many aspects od the plane is close to reality.
World Update VIII – IBERIA – Timestamp
Portugal and Spain. New DEM (2 meter DEM for Spain).
Local Legends #3 – Dornier Superwal - First transatlantic flight (from Spain to South America) - Timestamp
We are scanning the original plane and we’ve scanned the replica.
SIM Improvement 2022 - Timestamp
Seb – I talked a little bit about this last autumn. We didn’t want to work only on helicopters but bring a feature that would be beneficial for the SIM. Propeller blades were using the old FSX system and for helicopter we needed to improve this feature. On SU8, 3 airplanes are going to get it.
What was important for Helicopter is simulated airflow around the airplane and impacted by the aircraft itself. This benefit back of the simulation of airplanes.
On SU9, we are going to open this to a selection of airplane but also for 3rd parties.
Martial – Implement Weather and Terrain API – It’s still under investigation as we are looking for some solutions to let people have access to it.
Martial – Multiple Screens Functionality – We are still improving our rendering engine
Martial – Replay Functionality – It’s in the dev mode
Martial – DX12 – We are working on stabilization
Jorg – Main items in the feedback snapshot are moving forward.
Right now, the top bugs list isnt’ helpful. Big thread gathers several issues and need to be more granular in order to be addressed correctly.
Community question - What is the status on Sim Functionality for Complex Airliners?
Jorg – Few companies are working on complex planes, Aerosoft, DC design, Phoenix Sim, … and we are in contact with many of them in some degrees. We’ve been in contact with them since April 2020.
Some complex aircraft are coming to the sim coming weeks or months.
Community question - What is the future for live weather?
Martial – Live Weather will always be an ongoing work. There are still some issues in the data and the interpretation of it but we are working on this.
Since SU7 BETA, we pushed several fixes. Yet we still have some improvements to bring, on is the rendering system for the clouds themselves (for instance thin layer).
Jayne – Would you be able to explain the Daily outage in live weather
Fix planned for SU8 https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/online-services-monitoring/486800/4
Community question - Can we get an update on some 3rd parties aircraft no yet available on Xbox?
Jorg – We have 68 aircraft in total in the Marketplace (68 PC / 43 on Xbox) – within the next weeks, Xbox 3 party content will get closer to PC. There are few that won’t be on Xbox: CRJ, Twin otter,DC-6.
Unlike PC, console is considered a close environment. They can’t be hacked. Everything is in a same box. Some plane makers write their code in C++ and this language is a security risk if you don’t have it in a sandbox, this is why we use WASM, but it’s quite some work and the time we took to look into it was for the PMDG DC-6, we tested it and it didn’t work when we pushed it on the sim as it’s breaking some security rules. There’s not much games on console open to 3rd party content. The platform team is committed, they want to enable 3rd party plane to console and keep the platform safe.
It’s going to take a few months, but we are going to make it.
Community question - Do we have any improvement coming for DX12?
Seb – Yes, we have been working on a separate branch for a prototype test improvement. We’ve implemented DLSS and we were positively surprised as it works better than expected. It brings big performance improvement with the same quality on a GPU side. We are going to bring that to DX12.
We are working on a branch where we are improving DX12. It will come out with a Sim Update.
Community question - Is there going a SU8 BETA?
Martial - Yes
Community question – Can we have more “clean up” Sim Updates in the future?
Jorg – Sim Update 9 is going to focus on Stability
Martial – That’s right. As we have many different config among the community, some may still experience issues that we considered fixed internally. If you have a repro, please use the forum and be as specific as possible providing all the information needed to help solving the issue.
Jorg agrees that more testing and more resources are needed.
Community question – Is the Fokker going to include a Manual?
Jorg – We put the PDF on the website, but we can’t put it on Xbox. Oliver has written a Manuel on the Junker. Here
The plan is to make manuals for all future planes but are still trying to figure out how to put it on Xbox. The intention is to make them available as asked by the Community.
Community question – Can we talk about the performance decrease whenever you have pop-up panels activated?
Seb – There’s a partial fix coming for SU8. When I say partial, it’s for some cases, for instance it’s not fixed on my computer. It’s a complex problem with v-sync fighting when we have opened windows.
We are trying to find a fix for configurations where it’s not working
Community question – Do we have an update on achievements that are unavailable or impossible to achieve?
Side note: We’ve logged several Community Feedback on achievement that can’t be unlock such as “My Way”,“Decathlon” or “Frequent Flyer Miles” achievements.
Community question – Do we have any AI traffic logic behavior improvement plans for 2022?
Martial – Yes, we still have too much legacy behavior and revamp of this feature is needed. In Sim Update 8 we will include some improvement on AI planes not departing.
Jorg – There’s a team including Working Title discussing the improvement of the AI traffic.
Martial precises that ATC is also a factor to take into account in these improvements.
Community question – Is the prop wash going to interact with object such as trees, buildings, and water or only terrain.
Seb – Right now, this is already natively interacting with the plane itself. We have an API that we used that basically allows to look the airflow on the tarmac for instance. You’ve probably seen in the SIM when there’s wind and it brushes the grass so it’s possible. The API allows plane makers to see the temperature, the pressure, and the airspeed around the aircraft.
That’s the kind of improvements we will bring and that plane makers can use to make the simulation better.
Community question – Xbox - Is there plan on letting players importing PLN files from external sources?
Jorg – We need to be careful for security reasons.
Community question – Would we be able to put out a list of coming soon aircraft?
Jorg – I like that idea. We are doing something similar already. Keep in mind that we don’t have any control on when 3rd party planes are ready to be delivered.
Community question – Is there a plan to bring the Replay Feature to Xbox?
Martial – Replay consumes memory and hard drive place. For now, it won’t be available because of that but we are looking for a solution.
Community question – When can we expect getting working windshield wipers?
Martial – We have Artists and devs discussing this to make it happens. We’ve got everything planned but not yet prioritized. We need to find the right balance between adding new features and improving the stability of the Sim. You will have to wait a little for this feature.
Community question – Airflows shown before, is that going to be in Dev mode?
Seb - It’s currently in dev mode. We’ll see later how we can make it more user friendly.
Community question – Any updates on VR?
Jorg – We are going to talk about it next month.
Community question – Can we expect performance bug to be fix for SU9?
Seb – Yes, we will test and try to reproduce. For this kind of bug, as soon as we get it, it’s going to be fixed. If it’s very random and we don’t know where it comes from, it’s going to be complicated.
Community question – Is there a plan to make the ghosting while flying close to other airplanes an option to toggle ON and OFF?
Martial – Yes, it’s possible.
Community question – Can the MSFS development team can investigate the store installation issues?
Jorg – The Store team is looking into it. The Store got better, and we are trying to work with them to improve the install process.
Community question – When are you planning on making improvement on the in-sim Marketplace?
Jorg – Sim Update 8 contains what we call Marketplace 2.0. We try to make the marketplace better and I would be happy to think what the Community thinks of it.