Chris from Working Title provided an in-depth walkthrough of new developer tools aimed at bringing third-party aircraft into Career Mode. The system uses:
A Career Compatibility Tool: Validates aircraft configuration.
A Career Tool: Allows devs to simulate career scenarios in development.
Detailed documentation and automatic ingestion processes through the Marketplace.
Only aircraft distributed through the Marketplace will be eligible for Career Mode integration. This ensures stability and security, avoiding exploits or incompatible configurations.
Career mode traction and expansion
Career mode is being played by as many users as free flight, according to telemetry, surprising even the team. There are plans to expand available mission types and aircraft categories, with Sim Update 3 expected to include heavy transport missions (e.g., for the C-17) and more Career-compatible aircraft.
Third-party aircraft are expected to join career mode soon, thanks to the toolset now available. Support for more aircraft types (like bush planes and fixed-wing firefighting) is also in consideration, though bush trips will likely return only in SU4 or SU5.
Jorg discussed this during one of the previous developer livestreams. We have received very strong feedback from the community that players want the current focus to be on bug fixes and core sim improvements rather than new first-party content releases.
Of course itās always a balance, and weāre not doing exclusively one over the other. In addition to MSFS 2024 SU3 and MSFS (2020) SU16 (both of which is currently in public beta testing), we have also announced the following upcoming new content releases:
Famous Flyer 12: Piper PA-28-236 Dakota
City Update 11
Expert Series 2: Embraer Praetor 600
As Iām sure you know, this is just what weāve announced publicly so far but isnāt everything we have in the pipeline. Be sure to watch future Developer Livestreams for announcements of other upcoming content releases!
Iām guessing distributed also means bought through the marketplace?
For instance, if you bought a PMDG plane directly from PMDG, it would still not work with career mode, even though PMDG sells their planes through the marketplace?
Actually, there was something that was bothering me that was said in the Livestream that bothered me, it was nagging at me, but I just couldnāt put my finger on it until now.
Jorg said that as we all know, there were bugs in 2020 bush trips, and they just didnāt have time to fix all the bugs and then do all the 2024 work on top of that. BUTā¦ that means to not include bush trips was a planned management decision way ahead of release. So when we were told ānothing of 2020 is being removed. We are only adding to itā that wasnāt quite true. There had been a management decision to not work on bush trips and not have them available at launch. Why wasnāt that communicated to us thenā¦
I asked that question especially for you with the form beforehand, man! Honestly . And they took it up. So at least you have some info. Itās a bummer long wait. I have to watch the steam yet, so I am curious to learn about the why.
I was bothered by that statement, too. Back in February, Jƶrg (to his credit) released some numbers and said that in their internal testing period before launching 2024, they filed 50,000 bug reports. They squashed 32,000 of them, and some of the remaining 18,000 were dupes. (He did not give out a final number of bugs they launched with, but he characterized it as āmuch, much, much, much smaller.ā) Nonetheless, itās safe to assume that they knowingly launched with thousands of bugs. I donāt see how bush trips would have significantly added to that number.
Yet again another update and another Beta to go to and still no āReal Timeā fixes for the Azores and other Regions of the Globe. YouĀ“ve made a promise and youĀ“re not complying to it.
IĀ“ve been waiting for this ever since Aug last year I think and nothing.
Got one different issue this time, IĀ“ve got myself a plane from Black Box Simulations (BN2-Islander) and I do love the plane, my issue is that on the Market Plane it shows as āNOT OWNEDā
have send emails to both sides and both of them are blaming the other one. This kind off thing drives me crazy.
While its true It wonāt be Just Flight level Just Flight has a Warrior and an Arrow not a Dakota. Carenado even has a few Cherokees out of their own. An Arrow (newer model than Just Flight) and an Archer.
I did them for about a year by hand. It was an enormous amount of work and most people didnāt seem to care. (Check out the first one I did. It took days to get each one right, and a total of 11 people put a like on my work.)
Someone else did them after I left, but they used AI and there were some mistakes in them. After that, the Community team took it over, and they also used AI, and there were also mistakes in those, too. (Combination of probably being trained on American accents, plus the heavy use of aviation, computer, and gaming terms unfamiliar to the system.) My guess is that they found it to be too much trouble for what they were worth.
. And they took it up. So at least you have some info. Itās a bummer long wait. I have to watch the steam yet, so I am curious to learn about the why.