There’s an awful lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator news to cover this week and its only Wednesday. Today the Microsoft team hosted Hans Hartmann for a first party aircraft presentation looking at the PC-6 and the DHC-6 Twin Otter for MSFS 2024. There’s some interesting pieces contained in there. Microsoft have provided updates on their plans for the marketplace and for those with the Limited Collectors Edition that have been delayed on their shipping plans. There’s also some controversy brewing in the world of scenery developers. Finally, a couple of developers have revealed their upgrade plans in the last couple of days that I wanted to include in the round-up as well. Let’s have a look at it all!
Hans Hartmann presents the PC-6 and DHC-6
The Microsoft Flight Simulator team have hosted their latest first party developer stream and this one was focused on the work that long time aircraft developer Hans Hartmann has been doing on two aircraft that are coming in MSFS 2024.
The aircraft in focus were the PC-6 and DHC-6 Twin Otter. This stream was particularly interesting because both are types that we’ve seen previously in MSFS in different ways and I was keen to learn what we could about the two.
First, the PC-6 is essentially an updated version of the one that we got bundled into the 40th Anniversary Edition. The visuals appear to be similar to what we saw before on the surface, however, the upgrades mean that the type has received all of the walk-around capabilities that we’ve seen on other aircraft. You can move around the exterior of the aircraft, remove the covers, check the tires, open the engine cowling and check the oil before moving into the interior. Later on in the stream, Hans showed us the dirt effects at play as well with several different effects that can be applied as the aircraft continues to be used. Love to see it.
Then we went to have a look at the DHC-6 Twin Otter. This was interesting to me because I own the Aerosoft Twin Otter that Hans worked on previously. Aerosoft stopped selling the aircraft a couple of years ago under then mysterious circumstances. It seems that Microsoft purchased it and brought it into the game. What I wanted to know was just how much had changed and has it turns out, quite a bit has changed.
The exterior model, interior model and flight model are all almost entirely new. The cockpit looks noticeably different and is apparently based on 3D scans of a real DHC-6. The sounds have been updated, the systems have been updated, and it looks like we’re basically working with a brand new airplane. There are three variants including wheeled, ski and amphibious. The downsides appear to be that we have just a single variety of nose (DHC-6s come in short and longer nose variants) and there appear to be only three skins included of which two are marked and one is a white reference livery for livery artists. I’m hoping that we’ll see plenty of great options appear around the community over time but I do kind of wish it had a few more going in.
The presentation was, I have to say, a bit rough in places and we can see that during the walk-around some click spots weren’t working the way they should be. Some passenger models in the DHC-6 were difficult to fit into the seats (something Hans referenced). At one point during the PC-6 presentation we saw the pilot figure standing straight up through the model. These are to be expected but hopefully many of these rough edges are smoothed out for release – its unclear how old the developer build is relative to what is releasing next week.
We’ve also learned that Hans continues to work on the ATR airliner for MSFS with upgrades to that aircraft planned that will bring it up to MSFS 2024 spec. It doesn’t sound like these will be in at launch but hopefully will be coming soon thereafter.
Marketplace plans
Something else we learned from Jorg Neumann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, at the beginning of the stream is that they have decided to limit the marketplace at launch. Everything you own you can still access, download and try out – something I’m glad they clarified. However, new purchases are not going to be enabled for a couple of weeks.
Jorg reports that this is due to developer feedback saying that they’d rather more time to sort things out before starting to sell products in the marketplace that may or may not work properly in the new sim. While it does seem like most things will technically work, experiences may not be entirely what you expect jumping from the old to the new sim. Developers will no doubt be testing and then approving or holding back items once sales kick in.
Delays on the Collectors Edition
If you’re one of the small number of folks who have purchased the Collectors Edition, the one that comes with an An-225 model, a flight bag, collectible retail box, logo pin and other collectibles, you may have heard that the release of this version of the sim in physical form has been delayed outside of the United States.
The latest update includes the following news:
This special edition is a love letter to you, our flight simulation fans, and we are heartbroken that our shipping solution for regions outside of the United States have suffered an unexpected delay. To be clear, there is no shipping delay in the United States, but unfortunately orders for regions outside of the US won’t be shipped out until the first week of December.
The solution is that Microsoft will be sending those affected a special token to give them access to a free month of gamepass so they can access the sim in the meantime. Then, Aerosoft, handling the edition in other regions together with Microsoft, will be sending along an additional code to give you access to the “Standard to Aviator Upgrade.”
Scenery controversy
Like many online communities, flight sim fans are no strangers to controversy and while I don’t report on every instance of it I do think this one is worth mentioning. I cannot independently verify the story, however, the number of corroborating stories and multiple developers affected appear to paint a picture of some unsavoury activity by one scenery developer.
The news has been spreading following a lengthy post made by Flightbeam Studios detailing some unusual occurrences and some challenges on the AVSim forums. The studio has noted that a competitor, BMWorld & AMSim, has been seemingly copying their roadmap and occasionally releasing scenery products just ahead of their own releases. On this point the team don’t appear to have a particular issue with as they note that they generally are encouraged by healthy competition and support between themselves and other scenery developers.
Where this takes more of a troublesome turn is where they appear to have uncovered that a user on the AVSim forums is the developer at BMWorld and they have been using the same e-mail address to post negative reviews of Flightbeam’s products while also purchasing and then distributing their products on piracy websites.
Following the post making the accusation, it appears that other developers have been also targeted. LatinVFR’s scenery has also had similar issues. The same e-mail address also appears to have been tied to a user who had since been banned from the Contrail store for similar issues. A thread detailing some of the challenges has been ongoing over the last couple of days.
BMWorld products are currently on sale on both iniBuilds and Orbx stores. A brief statement has already been made by iniBuilds via their Discord community indicating that they are looking into the accusation.
Again, I can’t independently verify the ongoing issue, however, this would be a buyer beware scenario when it appears that a developer may be openly offering their competitors work up for piracy while trying to boost their own competing product at the same time.
Upgrade plans
Two developers have recently posted their plans for MSFS 2024 updates.
AzurPoly have made some great aircraft products for Microsoft Flight Simulator and they have just revealed their plans for the new sim. They report that they have been testing their
Our goal is to have all our aircraft 100% functional in MSFS 2024, and for free (we will not charge our customers for their already bought aircraft to work in the new simulator). We hope that simulator core bugs will be fixed as early as possible, and we are currently deploying small updates in parallel to fix minor bugs on our side. We will flag our products as “compatible with MSFS 2024” only once it is the actually the case, which could happen later after the simulator release.
Meanwhile, FSimStudios, the makers of some of my favourite primarily Canadian airport scenery in Microsoft Flight Simulator, have released their plans for 2024. They, like many developers have been getting to grips with what the new sim will offer and have made the following plans.
Halifax and Winnipeg airports are intended to arrive on day one or as near to that as possible with fixes, improved performance and compatibility updates at no additional cost. Calgary and Toronto are next with optimization work required to get them to work properly with MSFS 2024. Both are expected to arrive by the end of 2024. Houston Hobby, Edmonton and London are to follow with no ETA but they are intended to be free updates.
Vancouver and Kelowna on the other hand will not be officially updated to the new sim (though they can be sideloaded) and instead the team intend to offer V2 upgrades. Two other Canadian airports are also in development. Read their updates on Facebook here.
Even if you don’t currently own any of these, this does continue to paint a picture where upgrades and updates to scenery and other items are possible but they are requiring some work from developers to make it work. I appreciate both developers offering as much as possible to make the upgrades free where possible and paid where needed.
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