Microsoft has been hard at work for months on their latest edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator. PC Gamer picked up on an eagle-eyed users post over at Resetera, who had posted the “development roadmap” from the May 14 Development notes at the Microsoft Flight Simulator official website.
According to the roadmap, the anticipated date for the closed Beta to begin is only indicated as being around mid-July. No other specific details are provided therein.
Additional highlights from the release notes include:
- Alpha 3 build was released on May 14th, coinciding with the development notes posting
- An extensive list of bugs identified and fixes implemented for a wide range of aircraft and environs, as well as for playability, physics, and peripheral compatibility issues
- Alpha invitations are going out at this time
- Assessing Alpha participation options to increase the number of people involved in Alpha, and prioritizing for pre-release registrations for build testing.
- On the SDK, Flight Simulators’ Dev team reports that they are in contact with 200+ companies and 400+ developers who have access to the SDK
There are pages upon pages of notes, most of which report minute detail type issues. Some issues, such as visual pieces which are missing or appear/disappear and act incorrectly under certain circumstance. This is not unusual at this stage of the game development. In other words, there seems to be a good deal of development left. However, it also seems a decent amount of this is being sent out of house based on the volume of 3rd parties utilizing the SDK which could speed up development time.
Below are the complete notes from the May 14th release. Also, a very interesting story from one of the Flight Simulator’s community members is available in a posting on the development notes. I won’t retell it. Its better read straight from the forum.
Additionally, we dug back into the prior releases to find some content from the Alpha. Though there is still a lot of refinement that will be going on, some of the visuals are just breathtaking.
(Screenshot by OperatorLand468)
(courtesy MS Flight Simulator team)
MS Flight Simulator Potential System Requirements
The biggest question on everyones mind is. What will it take to run this behemoth? Of course we expect these to change as the game continues to develop. This, however, gives us a close idea as to what to expect.
We will continue to monitor and update with any exciting new details released by the Flight Simulator team.
I used to love playing Flight Simulator 98! Was so much fun taking off, watching the digital world below me from thousands of feet, and attempting to land (crashing). This new Flight Simulator looks incredible! Can’t wait to give up on Google Earth and fly this instead.
Same here. Also, having done a fair amount of flying with my dad, I can say that even for the time, the physics, appearance and positioning of the controls and instruments were pretty good approximations of the real thing. We flew quite a few times in Cessna 152’s and 172’s that looked just like in the game.
I’d love to learn to fly. By brother-in-law flies, I’ve always wanted to. Sadly, for now, I am stuck to flying my drone.
Drones = less hazardous
And much cheaper!!!!
Yeah, hundreds versus 10’s of k’s. Hell… I could spent more on hardware to fly in Flight Simulator than a good drone costs.
Hundreds? Pfft. What kind of drone do you think I have?! Bought the Phantom 4 Pro when it out. She’s a beast!
I have no idea. You’d probably spend the kind of money on a drone that you could buy an ultralight for.
[…] We’ve already taken a look at some of the visuals that were made available during the recent alpha testing, and it seems that Microsoft has gone to great lengths to bring as much visual realism to the simulator. […]
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