Developers, and the community, have long been crying out for the ability to allow aircraft developers to be able to tap into the data API that will allow them to display terrain and weather data. In particular, this would be helpful in order to show an accurate weather radar on the aircraft’s navigation display.
According to the latest FlightSimulator.com blog post, the first stage in implementing the ability will be released alongside Sim Update 10. In the wishlist image provided, the team say that developers will soon have the ability to access both terrain and weather data. This is at the top of the wishlist and has been pushed by the community since the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
The exact wording is, “WASM modules will soon have access to terrain & weather data. Once complete, we will evaluate how to est provide this info in JavaScript.”
This indicates that the work will only be partially completed with Sim Update 10, as the developers will continue this work post-sim update.
Hopefully, developers will be able to easily implement what is required in order to have accurate weather radars in their simulation, along with taking advantage of whatever other cool innovations they can make with this new data access.
Other activity on the wishlist also appears to indicate that Sim Update 10 will be a fairly significant one when it releases. Continuing with the theme of weather, cloud layer improvements are due with Sim Update 10. The cloud layering system is being fine-tuned to be more precise and incremental. Layers will be thinner at sea level and ticker at higher altitudes. The system will also help depict more realistic cloud coverage at low altitudes.
Further stability improvements to DX12 are due to come with Sim Update 10, as is also DLSS. Bush trip bugs are also being looked at.
All of these improvements sound great, but we will still need to wait a little while before Sim Update 10 launches. Sim Update 9 is the next to be released on April 26th. Open beta testing for Sim Update 9 is underway.
For more on Microsoft Flight Simulator development, check out the latest developer Q&A live stream.
