Another week sees another development update of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

It includes a new episode in their Around the World series of videos, new details on the VR Closed Beta, the latest Development Roadmap and Feedback Snapshot, and an SDK update.

Before all that however, Microsoft provided reassurance about the transparency of their plans and efforts in developing the simulator.

“You got it! You’ve heard us say it a thousand times, ‘This is just the beginning,’ and we mean it,” said the team in response to a user on Avsim, who praised their efforts in publicising their roadmap and regular updates.

“Weekly Development posts will continue as we focus on providing updates to the sim on a regular basis and ingest your feedback daily. We are prepped to release Update #5 next week and will provide more details then. We aren’t going anywhere!

“Speaking of, our next live Developer Q&A is scheduled for next Wednesday, October 28th at 10:30am PDT. Scroll down to the Twitch section of this update for more information.”

They then proceeded to discuss their Partnership Series which currently has seven episodes; whilst there was no new video this week, Microsoft recapped the past and looked to the future.

“The first seven episodes of our Partnership Series introduced key partners that helped us in the creation of Microsoft Flight Simulator like meteoblue (real-time weather system), Blackshark.ai (procedural building generation, etc.), VATSIM (online air traffic control and flying community), Bing Maps (satellite and aerial imagery as well as DEM), Textron (close partnership in the development of 10 of our 30 launch planes), Gaya Simulations (development of airports and POIs for World Updates), and Aerosoft (retail edition and feedback on our SDK).

“We could not have created the simulator without these teams and are very grateful for the fruitful partnerships we have formed with these experts during the past years of development.

“In the coming weeks and months, we will continue this series and will present our collaborations with Azure Cognitive Services, NAVBLUE, key third party partners, several plane manufacturers, peripheral makers, and a few surprises.”

But there was new content in their Around the World series, with North America the focus for this week.

On the topic of the VR Closed Beta, Microsoft was optimistic they are on target to deliver the first build to wave one, consisting solely of Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets.

They are looking to send emails to successful applicants next week for wave one.

As mentioned in other development updates, following this will be wave two which covers the remaining VR headsets.

Their Development Roadmap differs slightly from the one released two weeks ago.

It can be seen Feedback Snapshots have been added to this week and in future updates, as well as the delay of DR Update Nov/Feb (Insider Preview) in mid-November to late November and a Partnership Series video in its place.

Looking at the Feedback Snapshot for this week, the top ten bugs are similar to last week’s, though the trends don’t quite match up to that of the 15th of October.

Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind the top bugs, as well as the top wishes, are non-exhaustive lists of the top twenty-four items in each category.

Finally, this week’s SDK update looks like this:

DevMode:

• The new Export Window is ready and will be made available in a future update.
• The node-based Visual Effects System is about ready to be used in production by the internal team. We will make it available broadly after the internal tests are complete.
• Improvements, new options, and small features continue to be added here and there in tools. To list just one of them: an optional auto-hide behavior is currently being implemented for the DevMode bar.
• As a background task the DevMode team is always working on improving the overall stability of the DevMode, giving a special focus to the Project Editor, the Scenery Editor, and the Aircraft Editor. The community’s feedback continues to be helpful to identify & fix bugs and thus make the tools better.

WebAssembly:

• The WASI layer filesystem functions have now all been implemented.
• Mouse events are now forwarded to gauges through a new callback.
• Preparing the new GDI+ implementation for release.
• New samples (windsock and bears) have been added to the SDK.

To check out curated screenshots and to see updates on Marketplace products, see the original post on their website here.