Jorg said in the last Q&A that they want to make sure that WASM planes are available sooner rather than later. But that really depends on the 3rd parties and the result of their testing.
I think WASM is going to narrow the gap significantly with planes available for PC not currently on Xbox. But there may still be issues that need to be ironed out on the 3rd party side. And there may be planes that just won’t fit into the Xbox’s memory footprint, no matter what.
I’m sure this would be because of a contractual agreement with MS/Asobo in order for them to get an early copy of the WASM to test.
I think we should temper our expectations. WASM support coming to Xbox is a huge deal, but it won’t immediately solve other technical issues. It’s not like PMDG or Aerosoft just flick a switch and we have those aircraft at that moment. Well, technically it does work like that, but nothing guarantees a smooth and polished experience on Xbox.
Since WASM support wasn’t available on Xbox in the past, it’s safe to assume that most of these developers created their aircraft with only PC in mind. Which means they probably didn’t optimize much for graphical power or memory footprint. Xbox consoles are essentially very low-spec PCs with miniscule memory. We’ve seen many times that add-on developers had to do extensive work on more complex aircraft in order to “fit them” on the consoles (see IndiaFoxtEcho’s F35, for example). No one knows how a PMDG 737 or an Aerosoft CRJ would run in their current forms on Xbox. It’s quite possible they would just tank performance, or even induce memory-related crashes.
Having WASM is only the first step, and only then will we (and the various developers) see if these products run at all on the consoles. If the experience is not satisfactory, then it’s up to the developers whether they want to do the extra work to optimize for weak hardware or just skip it altogether. Only they know if it’s financially viable for them.
The Airbus A310 serves as a good example. IniBuilds had to create two separate versions, one without the cabin altogether, and lower resolution textures, in order to fit into the Xbox’s tiny memory. Will PMDG or others go this extra mile? It’s too early to tell yet. But I wouldn’t count on full add-on parity with PC, even with WASM support.
Me neither however WASM and DX coding are certain to get refined bringing video memory usage down or rather improving garbage disposal to keep more of it free. Then content can be loaded faster even if in smaller blocks and more complex aircraft will be possible. Of course creating such engines is no mean task but advances in AI should help speed things along. Also development of the next gen of xbox is probably well underway already.
It’s entirely possible those aircraft have been run on the Xbox emulator. The emulator is still what is used for development and didn’t exhibit the WASM issue that the console itself has.
Any one of the developers out there could easily test their WASM aircraft right now on “Xbox” (again, in emulator mode), because they already have the tools to do so.
But we do. The PMDG 737 is incredibly optimized, and the consensus is that it performs better than the A310 on the Xbox, which runs just fine, even on a Series S.
A lot of very angry people on Facebook pages lol
Why, because they elected not to educate themselves and they thought their Xbox would magically transform into a PC?
Looks like it I feel.
Not so much they didn’t educate themselves. More like the world in general today. They elected to ignore anything that others said that didn’t match their preconceived notions. Anyone that said anything that didn’t match their little echo chamber was called names and ignored.
Will WASM allow a 3rd party developer to release a record/tower view function for xbox ?
I see no reason why not so long as it is written with xbox in mind. It’s the same for any addon … and most of the old and free ones don’t stand a chance without xbox specific updates from their devs.
Would it be easier for a Dev to rewrite an Addon to make it work on the Xbox or just change a few bits of code?
I am not very computer savi. Even though I love sim games.
Maybe everyone will learn a bit more tomorrow in the dev stream.
I also have a question in mind,
From WASM support FAQ:
'What does WASM on Xbox do?
…However, WASM usage is not only limited to aircraft."
So what else WASM can bring to us Xbox users other than aircraft?
Why are people angry?
They just are, it’s quite normal for 2023
It is my understanding that these angry individuals had convinced themselves that WASM support was going to open up their Xboxes to all of the external applications that can run on PC.
So, things like VATSIM, the FBW A310, etc., etc.
That was never the case.
FSHub.io is looking into creating a Landing Rate Monitor for Xbox users to better utilize their website. I think Wasm support could also potentially allow add-ons like Got Friends’ 40th Anniversary Enhancement to be brought over.
I am not saying that either will happen though. However I would love it if they did.
I was laughing for sure😂
