So, during the Live Stream on the 18th, the WASM for Xbox topic was brought up.
And for me, despite the delay, it got interesting.
I was under the impression that WASM was simply just adding the ability to bring over, say, flightsim.to content to Xbox…similar in fashion to how Nexus Mods are natively available to be ported to Xbox on Fallout 4.
However, Jorge said “we didn’t just want to add a DLC…” and “right now…it’s clunky.”
Granted, I haven’t really looked into what WASM actually is. I assume some sort of coding platform?
That said, is WASM an actual “coding” client for MSFS and NOT just simply an avenue for additional 3rd Party add-ons to come to Xbox?
WebAssembly/Wasm is a code sandboxing technology that allows publishers to ship code that can be run securely inside a larger application, originally created for running things like games in web browsers. In MSFS it’s used to implement C/C++ add-on code (as opposed to JavaScript code). There’s overlapping sets of what C/C++/Wasm and JavaScript code can do in MSFS, which makes things confusing. Some add-ons use JavaScript only. Some use C/C++/Wasm only. Some use both.
On the Xbox platform, MSFS supports add-ons ONLY through the in-game Marketplace. You will never be able to install non-Marketplace content from flightsim.to or other third-party distributors.
Currently, Wasm is not yet supported on Xbox for some technical reason that I don’t know but is probably related to code signing or memory security.
[Personally I find this somewhat ironic, as I had originally assumed they chose Wasm over the previous system of just linking in raw code as DLL libraries specifially to sandbox things for Xbox…]
In general is not allowed to use external code on console (MS&Sony). A console is a closed box - thats the reason, that normally the best mods for any game are on PC.
But i hope, that MS also will allow other Gaming Company also to use WASM for their Mods.
So when it will be changed on Console OS Level, it should be available also for other Games.
Yeah, I was kind of figuring they’d end up needing to do the compilation on the Microsoft/Asobo side and publish actual signed DLLs through the Marketplace or something, but I don’t know enough about how DLC works on the Xbox platform to know if that’s “easy” or “hard”
I’ll just wait for them to sort it out; in the meantime it all works on my PC.
Long Story short - you need external Code do make nice but sophisticated things on Mod.
For example you will have on the DC-6 an “virtual” Co-Pilot. This doenst work on Standard Flight Sim Installation. But due injecting your own line of codes in the Mod, the Devs can do things which are normally not supported by the standard SDK of Flight Sim.
That is the reason, why “Study Level” Planes are today not available for Xbox like the DC 6 or the Piper Warrior from Just Flight.
And this is also the reason why the most Xbox simmer are very hot to have this kind of update
