There’s a lot happening behind the scenes at Asobo Studios, the developers responsible putting together the new generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator. This week we’ve learned some interesting and noteworthy details about the latest alpha and a new video has been released – something different than we’ve seen before that details a partnership with MeteoBlue and how that partnership interacts with Flight Simulator. Here are the details!

New alpha updates

This week’s developer update from Asobo Studio details a lot of the new updates that have gone into the latest alpha for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Here are just a few of the highlights that I think are particularly noteworthy:

• Flight model updates affecting all aircraft including aerodynamics changes for vertical and horizontal surfaces including the tail which should make it behave more like a wing surface (instead of a flat surface) leading to more realistic elevator and rudder authority.
• New camera improvements have been made for the cockpit camera’s movements in all directions and right click and mouse drag lets you now control the free look camera (might be useful for looking around or possibly for creating future cinematic videos)
• Dozens of updates for aircraft including tweaks to the TBM930’s displays and auto pilot systems, MCDU improvements for airliners, systems improvements and bug fixes (i.e. you can’t APU GEN and EXT POWER working at the same time anymore)
• Airports have seen updates too with enhancements to surfaces, markings, parking areas, and taxiway logic,

There are also updates on the list that include items that are obviously reasons why Flight Simulator is still an alpha – aircraft not starting when following the checklist and the odd crash among them. This is normal at this stage of course.

Alpha invites

Microsoft has progressively been sending out more alpha invites and I know at least one person myself who received one just today so they are going out there. Patience for the rest of us who really want to see what this next gen sim is going to be like.

Partnership video series

The first in what looks to be a series of videos is out that they are calling their ‘Partnership Series Update’ with the first one focusing on MeteoBlue. A private weather forecasting company, MeteoBlue is providing the weather data that Microsoft is using to generate real time weather in the sim. Very detailed weather data, which has already been detailed in their past Feature Discovery Series, will be constantly fed into the simulation. At the end of the video, they even say that this will be an interesting feature to be able to experience their weather data in a simulation engine – beyond just the charts and maps.

For those interested in weather forecasting, modeling data, and how it works with Flight Simulator, check out their new video.

More updates on the Flight Simulator website.