Today has been an exciting day in the world of flight simulation! We’re one day into the amazing event that is FSWeekend in Lelystad, The Netherlands, and we’ve prepared a roundup of all the day’s news if you didn’t catch it yesterday.

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Today’s event was kicked off by Magnus Axholt, CEO of Navigraph, and his announcements on some new features coming to their Charts software, chiefly among them being able to now annotate charts, as well as Operational Flight Plans from SimBrief. Along with being able to highlight taxi routes, users are also able to create boxes around important items such as minimum speed restrictions. Along with changes to Navigraph Charts, Axholt mentioned a new project dubbed “Navigraph Academy” set to debut this fall. According to him, the project “basically stems from the fact that you guys have been missing an instruction manual."

Moving on to the next announcements, which came from Thompson on the X-Plane team, discussing all that is to come with the upcoming X-Plane 12.1.0. First, he went over how graphics will be improved in the update, with fixes to CPU performance, clouds, and highly requested fixes for the Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) in the sim. Along with those, there are new particle effects, improving immersion in-sim.

Thompson went on to describe improvements for the weather system, including a brand new real weather server, as well as improvements to METAR parsing, and fixes for odd weather data. Phillip from the team discussed improvements to avionics, including the G1000, STEC S-360 Autopilot, and new ice/de-ice visual effects. Also discussed during the presentation was additions for Pro users of X-Plane.

After X-Plane came a video showcase from the team at FlyByWire, which featured their highly anticipated A380X, and showed progress on visuals, systems, sounds, and even a fully modeled cabin. You can watch the showcase video on YouTube here and see the amazing work they’ve done!

Next up was Mobiflight, hosted by creator Sebastian (who I had the pleasure meeting at FSExpo ‘23). The main emphasis during their presentation was the power that the flight simulation community has, and how amazing it can be through the power of open source software. Mobiflight also announced that they are getting a new UI and frontend framework, which will include lots of design improvements as well as a dark mode.

Last, but certainly not least was a lesser known company amongst the mainstream flight sim community, ProSim. ProSim is mainly known for their aircraft software that can be used to integrate into home built full flight simulators, and is very popular in that market, but has recently gained traction due to the fact that the Fenix A320 was based off of ProSim’s A320. They are also known for their commercial solutions through their fixed base trainers. In their presentation, ProSim renewed their focus on home cockpit building, by launching a new brand, called HomeSim. They have split their consumer business and commercial business, where the consumer side is now HomeSim, and the commercial side is still ProSim. They have a substantial development roadmap for home users, and have rededicated themselves to home simulation.

And with that closes a very packed day at Europe’s largest flight simulation convention! But, there’s still another day, so stay tuned to Threshold for the roundup for Day 2, and a sneak peak behind the scenes on what goes on at FSWeekend!