Uncharacteristically, the Microsoft team has decided to stray from their regular schedule to release their weekly update a day early this week. Asobo started the announcement off by thanking users for participating in their “Live Developer Q&A”. 

You can watch the Q&A VOD on their Twitch or YouTube channels once it’s uploaded next week. This weekly announcement from Microsoft touches on multiple topics, announcing a new partnership, SDK updates, an updated roadmap and more.

Continuing their announcement, Microsoft revealed their new partnership with Honeycomb Aeronautical, a company specializing in creating HOTAS controls for multiple flight simulators. 

In the announcement video, Honeycomb revealed that they’re going to be creating products for the Xbox series X and S, showcasing their newest product, the “Foxtrot Flight Stick” and the “Tango-Foxtrot Stick and Throttle” (showcased below). 

Honeycomb stated their “focus has been on integrating as many real cockpit components as possible.” Also, Honeycomb is bringing some of its previously PC-only products to the new consoles enabling the alpha flight controls, bravo throttle quadrant, and charlie rudder pedals to work without issue on the Xbox. 

Lastly, Honeycomb finished the announcement video stating that their “partnership with Microsoft and Asobo studios will be instrumental in bringing the ultimate flight simulator experience to any home user.” 

For full coverage of all the new developments out of Honeycomb today, check out this article rounding up a very busy day of news for them.

Microsoft also provided us with an extensive roadmap spanning to the end of February. The roadmap provides us with a multitude of new information, with the United Kingdom being confirmed as the location for “World Update” #3, among other things. 

Along with the roadmap, a weekly feedback snapshot has been provided by the developer.

For the second consecutive week, updates to the SDK have also been brought in, with the following list provided:

• Throughout this week, the DevMode team has been actively focused on the last fixes for Update 7. We hope you will enjoy the results -> check-out the SDK Release Notes!
• On the Scenery Editor, the Heightmap Editor is nearly finished. We are also working on providing an editable hierarchy for object instances, which was one of the top requested features in terms of scenery editing.
• The new Visual Effects are now coming to production, even though we still have work to do on process optimization. We’re also adding new SimVars, which is needed to condition the triggering of effects.
• Besides all this, the whole new asset creation system within the Project Editor remains a work in progress, of course.
• As a background task, the DevMode team is always working on improving the overall stability giving special focus to the Project Editor, the Scenery Editor, and the Aircraft Editor. The community’s feedback continues to be very helpful in identifying & fixing bugs and thus making the tools better.

• We have fixed the functions related to AI objects and AI aircraft [SimConnect].

Lastly, an update on third-party add-ons was provided, showcasing the incredible amount of add-ons that have been released for the sim thus far. Microsoft also confirmed that they’ve been talking to multiple freeware groups, including “Working Title” and “Fly By Wire,” stating that they would like to engage deeper with those dev teams. 

The team at Asobo also showcased a list of all third-party add-ons available for the sim, seen below:

Airports

• 214 have been released on the platform so far (that’s 27 since last week)
• another 48 have been announced and
• an additional 118 are in production by third parties but are not yet announced officially.
• In total 380 airports are either already released or are in active production. Just stunning to see the amount of enthusiasm and productivity.

Aircraft

• 9 aircraft have been released (+2 since last week),
• another 56 are announced, plus
• there are another 20 unannounced.
• So overall, 85 aircraft are either released or are in production.
• Just to mention it, we are super excited to see what Aerosoft, Hans, Stefan and the rest of the team are doing with the CRJ. It’s so rewarding to see a team embrace the SDK and create a complex aircraft with it. It’s just great quality and we are so excited to see this come together!

Scenery

• 29 scenery add-ons have been released (+4 from last week) and this category is thriving. Great to see all the progress.
  

Microsoft ended the announcement with a community spotlight, as well as thanking users for their suggestions regarding an airport gateway system; the dev team has stated that they will form a plan to get one going in 2021.

See the source post for this article on the Microsoft Flight Simulator website.