FS2020's Alpha 1.2.5.0 Adds Cessna 152, Training Missions & Multiplayer

Microsoft Flight Simulator's development team has unveiled a new update to their alpha simulator, bringing it up to Alpha 1.2.5.0. The latest version features changes across the simulator, touching almost every aspect of the experience, from new aircraft to added peripheral recognition.

The main drawcards of this new version were put right up the top - a new GA aircraft, the incredibly popular Cessna 152, new training missions, live events such as the Sedona landing challenge and a few multiplayer options.

No images of the Cessna 152 are available at this time.

This update is not an April Fools joke, Threshold has been able to confirm.

Users can now add their friends in the simulator and see a live overview of their flights and giving them the ability to join in, live. This ties in nicely with the "Group Multiplayer" function showcased in last week's Feature Discovery Series episode which has also been added in v1.2.5.0. Here's the list of changes they provided us for multiplayer:

  • Friend groups
  • Add friends – use the Add Friend icon on the top of the menus
  • Your Friends are now represented by an icon in the Freeflight World Map; click on them to join them
  • To change MP preferences, go to the World Map and select Flight Conditions
  • In-game traffic nameplates now apply to other users
  • Player Representation – Anyone using your plane will show up in the same aircraft as yours – if they are using a different aircraft than yours, they will appear as a “generic” aircraft.

Learn more about multiplayer in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 in a previous article.

Of course that's not all in this coincidentally timed April Fools' Day update, with another 11 sections detailing all the changes made, starting with aircraft.

Glass cockpits, icing control and cockpit occluders saw minor bug fixes, with the DA40 NG and DA62 getting an extra knob on their G1000s. The latter craft and TBM930 also have improvements to their flight models bundled in the update.

In terms of airports, large scale bugfixes removed buildings from runways and misplaced vegetation in the same general area. Also, improvements to ground markings, jetways, parking spots and air traffic behaviors were made.

Lastly, a list of airport which were reportedly missing in the previous alpha have been added back in.

The air traffic control and flight model systems also saw minor improvements - the latter seeing better ground behaviors added.

FS2020's Camera system saw a nice update too - with the following changes to each camera view:

Cockpit camera

  • Improved the Focus mode to be more accessible
  • Allowed camera speed & momentum tweaking in the menus
  • Added controls to translate the camera left/ right

Chase camera

  • Added 4 more quickviews

Drone camera

  • Improved the “Lock” mode behavior
  • Improved reset position feature

Smart Camera

  • Allowed smart camera to target other players

Peripherals and hardware control has also been a focus of this update, with improved menus, filters and calibration adding to the list of 15 new joysticks, yokes, rudders and throttle quadrants brought in with v1.2.5.0. Here they are:

  • T16000M (Already in Alpha 1)
  • TWCS (Already in Alpha 1)
  • TPR (Already in Alpha 1)
  • Warthog (Already in Alpha 1)
  • T-Flight HOTAS One, X & 4
  • Extreme 3D Pro
  • Flight Yoke System
  • Flight Throttle Quadrant
  • X52
  • X56
  • Yoko “The Yoke”+
  • TQ6+
  • V3rnio TPM
  • Ruddo+
  • Alpha Flight Control

Graphical interfaces up next with an update to the freeflight and flight planning settings: weather, traffic and multiplayer are now more accessible, as well as various fixes regarding the HUD and world map sections.

A list of general bug fixes has also been provided:

  • Overall, improvements made to stability and performance.
  • Flight plan approach waypoints displayed and followed
  • Altitude waypoint constraints displayed
  • Weather display has been improved
  • Multiples improvements to autopilot and auto-throttle
  • Fixed Trim from running too quick
  • Weather fixes made to Live-Weather settings and Conditions
  • Grass and water not going through cockpits

Ground scenery is another major benefactor from today's update, with elevation fixes made over water, grass and vegetation improvements, better tree and biome representation and updates to autogen realism and night lighting, plus the addition of windmills.

The changelog has two interesting lines in this section: Added night lighting to buildings in photogrammetric cities where there was none before - meaning cities of interest are represented with a more advanced technique for capturing building dimensions. The second line: Wind impact now on grass and trees - meaning that in-simulator wind will now blow around vegetation, something that is relatively new for flight sim, let alone a default addition in a simulator.

That's all for the primary portions of this update, though the developers have also included an extra passage of known issues and information on flight modelling, which takes up a significant amount of text space for those interesting in how flight dynamics in Microsoft's new simulator are coming along.

Read on for more information, or see the blog post on the Microsoft Flight Simulator website.

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Known Issues

  • Some jetways are misplaced at airports
  • Black stripes can be visible on the side of different world tiles
  • Trees sometimes overlap with buildings
  • There are missing buildings in Chicago-O’Hare airport
  • There are missing buildings in Frankfurt am Main Airport
  • FPS tends to drop after the end of a loading sequence
  • FPS tends to drops during intro cutscenes
  • Low FPS (10 to 20 FPS) in big airports when on the tarmac, both on the take-off and landing
  • There are possible FPS drops when moving the camera around the plane
  • Objectives can fail to show any inputs if they were previously cleared by the user under Controls
  • Panels previously undocked from the toolbar can appear enable on any Activity
  • There are issues with the TTS voice on the Take-off Flight Training when using the Female Voice
  • The TTS voice during the Take Off Flight Training audio and subtitles are mismatched
  • We still display some debug subtitle-text with TTS audio on the Landing Flight Training
  • Planes can teleport 900 – 5000 FT above when returning to freeflight from any Landing Challenge
  • The ‘‘Apply the Brakes’’ objective fails to get completed after the player applies the brakes during that Landing Tutorial
  • Objectives can break using the despawn /respawn at the start of the Take Off Flight Training
  • The TBM930 engine shuts down after a teleport
  • Intermittent weather bug that can sometimes create unrealistic gusting winds, more likely to hit this when the user changes settings mid-session.
  • HUEN main buildings are not spawning
  • Autopilot can become inoperable when switching between Vertical Speed and Altitude in All Aircrafts.
  • Switching instructor models mid flight (in tutorials) will not switch the instructor voices.

We have worked on some of the causes for ground instability. In FSX Ground Effect was calculated once per aircraft at the CG of the aircraft. The closer the CG got to the ground, the more the aircraft’s lift coefficient was scaled up (up to 25%). To get more realism, we changed this to calculate the ground effect separately for each surface of the aircraft. This reflects reality better as one wing may be closer to the ground than the other and be more impacted by ground effect. Also, because the FSX ground effect was still referring to the CG coordinates, we now calculate the collision distance between each individual surface and the ground. And with this fix we now get a different and better lift coefficient scale for each surface. This helps ground stability because when the plane starts rolling on one side, that side immediately gets closer to the ground and then gets more ground effect. The other side immediately loses ground effect. This tends to push the aircraft back toward a level horizontal position.

We have worked on roll stability, which is the consequence of many different aspects of an aircraft. Including dihedral, wing sweep, CG and wing position. One particular aspect we added is that high wings have up to 5% more “effective” dihedral giving them more roll stability. So, we added a system that automatically adds “effective” dihedral depending on the vertical wing position. This adds more roll stability to our all high wing aircraft (C172, C152, GRAND CARAVAN, …). This does not however affect low wing aircraft. Mid wing aircraft will get a little bit of this. Low wing aircraft however already usually have a higher actual dihedral which compensates for this. For all high wing aircraft, there is now improved dynamic roll stability. The effect is not super strong, but from a 30° bank, they will tend to slowly return to a neutral bank, the strength of the effect fades as the bank approaches zero. This helps with an overbanking tendency and improves roll stability.

Improvements have been made to takeoff trim, and the effects of wind when on the ground, which makes take offs more realistic and significantly improves the wheelbarrowing effect that sometimes happened.

Work was also done to improve the effects of winds and turbulence with all weather.

We’ve also been working hard on peripherals. While still WIP here are some updates:

  • Categories are minimized by default
  • Added a button to collapse/expand all categories
  • Categories keep their state (collapsed/ expanded) when switching devices
  • Improved controls settings menu performance (but more WIP)
  • Improved sensitivity menu (curves displayed)
  • Essential controls sorted
  • Added user input preset management
  • Better default mappings for more peripherals

We know there’s more to do and the team is working on things such as:

  • New search bar layout in the controls settings menu
  • Improved sensitivity and dead zone curves (algorithm update)
  • Inputs displayed in the same fashion as notifications in the controls settings menu

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