The latest Microsoft Flight Simulator blog has been shared by Microsoft and the team wanted to address the flaps issue that was introduced with the latest update. World Update III: United Kingdom and Ireland was released last week and whilst the number of new airports, points of interest and cities included was of benefit to the community, a bug with the flight dynamics was accidentally added to the simulator.
This bug meant that aircraft in the simulator were seeing a doubled lift effect, especially in flap configurations that produce a lot of lift (e.g. landing config). This issue was recognised in the official forums and a manual fix was mentioned. However, that fix isn’t straight forward and is noted that unless you feel comfortable with coding, you should not adjust this value. However, it is now confirmed that a hotfix is due to be issued next week to fix this issue. Microsoft said that they will need thorough testing and as such, other simulator updates will be pushed back by a week to accommodate this new testing regime.
To clarify, this means that Sim Update III and World Update IV have both been pushed back by a week. Sim Update III will now be released on March 9th 2021, with World Update IV: France & Benelux now coming during the early part of April 2021.
Also inside the update was an updated look at the development roadmap. However, a new SDK specific development roadmap was also shared and highlighted that developers will be able to add in-sim contrail visual effects from March 11th. That’s not to say we’ll suddenly see all third-party aircraft add the ability, but the fact they will be able to add the effects. Hopefully, this new SDK addition means that the simulator’s default aircraft will soon include them. Speaking of the SDK, a brand new documentation site has been released to give people a better look at the features of the SDK.
Finally, it’s been confirmed that a new Developer Q&A session will be held live on Twitch on March 10th at 10:30am PST (18:30z). You can see more details on the upcoming Q&A on their forums. The live sessions are a great way to get your questions answered by the developers and quite often they speak about features and updates coming in the medium term, so always worth checking out.
