The Microsoft Flight Simulator team took to Twitch last night to present their first developer live stream of the year. Usual panellists Jorg, Sebastian, and Martial were all present, with Jayne hosting the extra-long session. Special guest Chris Barnett from Working Title also joined the team. Over the 2-hour presentation, more focus was spent on the feedback snapshot so that the developers could really provide details on how the team are managing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024’s long list of to-dos.
Introspective on Launch of MSFS 2024
Jorg began the stream with a moment of reflection and confirmed that they set a monthly actual user (MAU) record, with many millions using flight simulators. They are pleased with how people are enjoying the career mode, and they’re seeing a trend of people using it more than free flight currently. Jorg also said they see something like 1.4 million people now using flight simulation.
When Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launched, it was met with many issues, Microsoft did acknowledge and apologised for, but they haven’t stopped there trying to asses how to make things right moving forward. In introspection, they have had many meetings around the CDN and server issues and are confident that there is solutions moving forward – not just for MSFS 2024 but for future titles (generally speaking, not flight sim related). The second part of this was how bugs are impacting the user’s experience. Jorg gave some numbers to highlight to the community that there was always an ongoing effort pre-launch to release this in a great state. Over 32,000 bugs were fixed, with over 50,000 being filed, all being completed by just over 90 people. Of the number that are now left, that number is much smaller now.
Speaking about how the team will deal with these things again in the future for future titles, Jorg said, “I’ve thought a lot about that. At some point, in the future, years from now, we’re going to make another, we want to avoid this from ever happening again.” He continued, “The answer is pretty simple: we will never ship something again without a proper beta period.” He said that they need to do a proper alpha for months, a proper beta for months, a fining phase for months, and spend “about a year in that state.” With then tens of thousands of people supporting the team, they will be able to get that under control for the future.
Right now, they are getting feedback from around 20,000 participants in the open beta. They wanted to release it earlier, but they realised that feedback, first and foremost, is important to ensure that a bigger rollout doesn’t present the same issues experienced before. Jorg said that whilst the rollout may be slower, but the stability of updates will be much higher, building a solid foundation moving forward.
In terms of the release notes, Jorg wanted to point out that not every bug fix or change makes the release notes. This is just because of the vast size of the team and multiple people working on different things. But he wanted to reassure the community that they are reading everything, making notes and fixing things as fast as they can, including those things not specifically mentioned in the release notes.
He concluded the introspective by saying that he and the teams are “100% focused on making Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 a great experience.” Just like with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, they are using feedback snapshot to help prioritise.
Feedback Snapshot Overview and General Questions
For around the next hour or so, the teams gave detailed answers and expectations on the lifetime bugs currently impacting MSFS 2024 in the feedback snapshop. The top 50 items were discussed and given explanations on how they happened or how they’ve been fixed and when to expect them.
In general, the top 25 or so are either set to be fixed with Sim Update 1 or are in progress for Sim Update 2. The next 25 (numbers 26-50) is a similar store, with more fixes found in Sim Update 2 with a handful of those reported still under investigation.
If you want to jump to a specific bug discussion point, SmotheryVase665 on the MSFS forums put together a great timeline of the discussion points. You can see it here and it relates to the Twitch timestamps (approximately).
As for the partner teams (e.g. Orbx, Carenado, Gaya, iniBuilds, etc), they are working just as hard on reporting and fixing bugs for scenery and aircraft. No specifics were mentioned, but just note that they are just as active as Asobo and Microsoft in addressing concerns and issues.
Similarly, the team answered a range of pre-stream questions submitted by the community (from around 72-minutes in. They discussed:
- Planned VR improvements
- Memory optimisations for MSFS 2020
- News on Reno, Roswell and Red Bull Racing
- DLSS4 (Multi Frame Gen)
- Rolling Cache
- ATC
- ..and more!
For VR users, expect the majority of your issues to be resolved in Sim Update 2. As for general performance issues (due to RAM and VRAM usage), Sebastian said plenty of optimisations are happening to reduce the footprint of aircraft. Sim Update 1 should see some improvements and more will continue to roll out over time.
In the future, we can also expect the ability to download aircraft and scenery to the local disk, see improved helicopter dynamics and general fixes to aircraft (both via core Sim Updates and server-side). DLSS4 is due to come natively with MSFS 2024 in Sim Update 2.
Sim Updates (General)
Jorg confirmed that the team will be releasing four “big” Sim Updates a year. They feel this is a good rhythm and balance of ensuring that things are fixed timely, but also allows time to develop and test for the community.
Sim Update 1 will not be the biggest of the year, but it will be a “fair size”, according to the team. As for Sim Update 2, they are aiming to release it by the end of April 2025. In a more exciting tease, Microsoft confirmed they intend on attending FlightSimExpo 2025 and Sim Update 3 will be a “playable gift” to those in attendance.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 In-Sim Marketplace Launch
Microsoft is keen to ensure that the in-sim Marketplace launches with a good user experience. Described as an extremely complex component of the title, they want to make sure that third-party developers and users have as trouble-free of an experience as possible.
Whilst they are not 100% confident on the date, they are aiming for a February 18th 2025 release for the in-sim Marketplace. They are bug-bashing and getting things in place, but there is a large effort to get it right.
Wishlist Snapshot
The message from the stream is about fixing what is currently in the simulator, not adding new features and functionality. That said, the team is constantly listening to requests and wishes from the community about what they want to see next.
World Update: Brazil
The team briefly updates the community on World Update: Brazil. It is being sat on whilst they await the launch of Marketplace. The current plan is to release it on March 11th 2025.
2025 Roadmap
The final part of the stream gave us a brief look at the roadmap for 2025. This has changed a bit since we last saw it with a renewed focus on ensuring that bugs are worked on. An example given is how World Update 19: Brazil has shifted, meaning that another planned World Update has now shifted into 2026. It will still come, but just further down the line.
March 2024 will see the release of Local Legend 20: Cap-4. Speaking of Local Legends, Jorg said we may see a bit more variance on when they’re released or how closely related to the World/City update they are. It all depends on what makes sense, especially as they look at regions of the world that may never have an aircraft manufacturer.
Famous Flyer #11: Cessna 185F also has a brand-new trailer and will be available when Sim Update 1 releases. As a reminder, this is part of the make-good aircraft that Microsoft has promised as a way to give back to the community following the launch of MSFS 2024.
Finally, there will be a few more surprises throughout the year.
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That wraps up the main points from the stream, but be sure to watch the full video to get the details on specific bugs or wishlist items. Microsoft and Asobo will be back in March with another stream to continue answering questions and check-in with the community following Sim Update 1 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
