World Update I: Japan took centre stage in this week’s development update of Microsoft Flight Simulator, following yesterday’s news of the update.

Microsoft elaborated on the news of the update by outlining its development and how it came to be, adding the announcement was made at Tokyo Game Show 2020 and it took a “village” of people to make it possible.

“The Bing Maps team delivered 6 incredible photogrammetry cities and an all-new digital elevation map that increases the detail of the entirety of Japan significantly,” the MSFS team said in the post on their website.

Gaya Simulations – a well-established scenery developer across multiple desktop flight simulators – was a part of the making of the scenery along with Blackshark.ai.

“Gaya created 3 of the airports RJFU – Nagasaki, RJTH – Hachijojima, and RJCK – Kushiro as well as all of the 20 new POIs.

“Blackshark.ai added a new traditional Japanese building type.

“Of course, the team at Asobo put it all together and created three additional airports – ROKR – Kerama, RORS – Shimojisjima and RJX8 – Suwanosejima as well as the three landing challenges and all the other elements needed to make the DLC a great experience.

“We hope you will enjoy this update … Japan is  an incredibly beautiful and diverse country.”

Further to this, the MSFS team expanded on how updates to the simulator will be rolled out, as well as a mention of first-party paid DLC.

“As we’ve always said, our launch in August was just the beginning. Our goal is to provide you with a meaningful update to the sim every month.

“In addition to increasing the visual detail of the planet with future World Updates, we also plan to add Simulation Updates every 2-3 months that will further enhance the overall sim experience.

“On top of that, we are developing some exciting paid DLC that we plan to rollout over the coming months and years, and we will share more information in the future.

“We are on an incredible journey together and we are committed to work with you, the community, to continue to improve and evolve Microsoft Flight Simulator for many years to come.”

The team made major revisions in terms of the Development Roadmap to make it more clear and accurate in the past, present, and future, adding in the upcoming World Update and more to the picture.

Coming back to the topic of World Update I: Japan, it has been decided to postpone the Partnership Series announcement by one week, which is to feature Gaya Simulations.

The SDK has been further expanded according to the MSFS team, with WebAssembly improvements, a fix to the SimConnect facilities API with plans to expand it, and plans to improve the overall useability, such as enhancing the visualisation of roads.

On top of this, more than one-thousand applications have been made to their Marketplace Partner Program.

The Feedback Snapshot top bugs and top wishes have now been summarised in two graphics, available to view below.

Their monthly live developer Q&A was also added in, slated for 30th September at 17:30 GMT.

Keep up-to-date with Microsoft Flight Simulator through their Facebook page, Twitter feed, and Discord server.