MSFS July 16th, 2020 Development Update

The Journey Continues

It's been just over a year since we announced the next iteration ofMicrosoft Flight Simulator and embarked on a journey with thecommunity to bring this product to market. While we are now just overa month away from launch, our journey with you has just begun.

We will continue working closely with the community. We willcontinue listening and reacting to your feedback and suggestions. Wewill continue updating our website, documents (e.g. DevelopmentRoadmap/Feedback Snapshot/SDK Updates), and working collaborativelywith the community to build this product/platform/franchise.

We are truly better together.

Thank you for your ongoing feedback, for your suggestions, forcontinuing on this journey with us.

Development Update

Closed Beta Timeline

As a Special Thanks to all of you in the Alpha Community for yourfeedback and dedication to help make Microsoft Flight Simulatorawesome, we are giving you early access to the Closed Beta buildtoday. A reminder that the NDA is still in place for the ClosedBeta. Enjoy!

Closed Beta is still tracking to release on 07.30.

Closed Beta Invitations

On July 23rd, we will begin sending out invitations for Closed Betaparticipation.

As a reminder, if you are already an Alpha tester, you willautomatically receive access to the Closed Beta.

SDK Update – Marketplace Partner Program Is Here

We are excited to announce our new Microsoft Flight SimulatorMarketplace Partner Program!

For the first time, Microsoft Flight Simulator will include abuilt-in Marketplace which enables approved partners to sell theircontent directly to simmers.

The 3rd party creator community has been incredibly vibrant,delighting simmers with their creativity for many years. We recognizethat creations by 3rd parties are a vital ingredient to broaden anddeepen the Flight Simulation experience so we are excited to announceour Marketplace Partner Program which enables approved partners tosell content within our built-in Marketplace.

We are looking for partners with all types of content that willenhance the simulation experience. We can’t wait to see what you comeup with!

SDK Development Update

We are making very good progress on the SDK and most of our focusin the past few weeks has been on bug fixing and quality-of-lifeimprovements based on requests and feedback from the third partydeveloper community.

We improved the documentation in several areas:

• Living world
• Airport services
• Jetways
• Ground vehicles in airports
• SimVars

We added new samples:

• A new sample demonstrates the edition of custom jetways.
• We added the full source for the DA62 aircraft as a more complex example that third party developers can inspect and learn from.

Beyond that, our sound team released video tutorials on the editionof aircraft sounds, and we are in the process of authoring new videotutorials for other areas. It is now also possible to edit custompainted lines in airports. Finally, we are improving SimConnectsupport and are developing an automated testing framework to helpguarantee SimConnect keeps working with subsequent updates to thesim.

Source