In the very first one-hour long video interview with the Head of Microsoft: Jorg Neumann, C.E.O Co-Founder of Asobo: Sebastian Wloch and Lead Software Engineer at Asobo: Martial Bossard gives some interesting talks about the developing of the upcoming MSFS. They all agree, when opening the alpha version for the community it was the best part to have real feedback from all over the world and different type of backgrounds of the testers. Some of the MSFS developers at Asobo Studio have been working on their own real-world aviation licenses during the Flight Simulator developing process.
Flight models are matching the Pilot’s Operational Handbook data, POH, but not every in-flight situation is explained there. Because of this, the MSFS team worked with real-world pilots to reach the needed accuracy out of POH data. Even though the default aircraft are very detailed and well flyable there will be added more features in the future updates released every few months. Replay mode from previous MSFS editions is coming later as well as the liveries for different airliners. At least the developers told us they contacted like every airliner in the world already.
The main message of the interview is that even if MSFS final release build comes out on the following Tuesday, the work is not done. MSFS team explains there is going to be a world updates with new hand-crafted airports and separate free updates providing bug fixes, feature add-ons, and database updates. Helicopters and gliders are coming later because the team first needs to learn how helicopters and gliders behave and therefore it will be a huge job to simulate that correctly to the base code.
MSFS autopilot team is the biggest group of the whole team because aircraft manufacture has their own autopilot systems. Comparing for example the Boeing and Airbus autopilots are designed to work in different ways. The team is planning to expand the weather engine with more cloud types and the possibility to stretch the clouds. Also, upper cloud layers stretched by the upper high wind conditions are on the list. What comes to the multiplayer, One Shared World, there’s no matter on which platform you are running MSFS, all pilots will be flying in the same online airspace.
MSFS team is planning to release a few helicopters from themselves as well as add-ons are coming from other publishers. Over 700 developers have reached the SDK tools to expand the aircraft catalog in the built-in marketplace as time goes by. For all those waiting for the Xbox release date, the answer is still unknown because the team itself doesn’t know yet how much work is left with the Xbox version and they want to deliver quality content. At the end of the interview, all agreed they will be having these interviews once a month from now on. Seems the upcoming autumn will be heating around MSFS so you better buckle up and stay tuned.
Microsoft Flight Simulator will be available for Windows 10 on August 18, 2020, as downloadable worldwide from Microsoft Store and Steam as well as boxed disc-publication from Aerosoft. Prices are for Standard 69.99 EUR, Deluxe 89.99 EUR, and Premium Deluxe 119.99 EUR.
