The wait was long but hopefully worth it as Microsoft has just released Sim Update 1 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This is the first significant update to the sim in a few months and by far the biggest update in the sim’s short history so far. Let’s have a look and see what SU1 offers us and check out to see what’s ahead for the sim!

A consequential update

I’ve written quite a bit in the last few months about the significant potential for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 as well as its rough around the edges state that the initial launch offered up. Sim Update 1 is an important milestone for the sim being the biggest update to date for the title.

I’ve read through the released patch notes and there’s quite a few items that they’ve tackled here. On the stability & performance, general bug fixes, and backwards compatibility fixes there are a couple dozen significant items listed as well as some smaller ones too. From fixed emissive lighting issues to bugs resolved on input controllers to problems with camera views, crash bugs, and other stability related items there’s quite a lengthy list.

Aircraft fixes

The longest list category is aircraft and that’s unsurprising as both Asobo as well as the third party developers have published lists of fixes per airplane. Most aircraft in the sim have seen some sort of attention which is great to see.

The folks at iniBuilds report memory optimizations across a bunch of their airliner projects and a much lengthier list of updates for the A330 and A400M.

Mike Johnson, the developer of the Albatross G111 / HU-16 managed a long list of fixes to that aircraft from flickering textures to a workaround for some buggy rain effects to reflection and lighting issues.

Other aircraft with fixes include the Baron G58, Bonanza G36, King Air, 737 MAX 8, 787-10 Dreamliner, C-17 Globemaster III, CH-47D Chinkook, Cessna 188 AGTruck, Dornier Seastar, a long list of fixes for the PC-12NG from Carenado, and even the Savage Norden and Draco-X from GotFriends saw a few tweaks too.

Career and world fixes

The Career Mode has a lengthy list of fixes to it too. They’ve fixed the mission not starting at the selected date and time, increased rewards for specific mission types, fixed windows not displaying correctly, and fixed some ATC interactions.

There are world updates too with updates to bugs like giant trees showing on corrupted TIN, a ton of LOD (level of detail) fixes on custom airports, vegetation improvements at some of those airports, and more.

That’s just some of what is reportedly fixed in Sim Update 1. I recommend reading the full patch notes to see if the issues you were most frustrated by have been sorted out.

Release of the Cessna 185F Skywagon

Carenado’s latest aircraft release, the Cessna 185F Skywagon is one of the four aircraft that Microsoft have promised to release to us for free as a kind of apology to make things right with the rough release state. It’s an appreciated gesture and the first aircraft out of the gate is the utility oriented Cessna 185F. Should be interesting to check out.

Future updates: Sim Update 2, Marketplace and World Update 19

The next big topic to cover are future updates. It was mentioned during the last Q&A that Sim Update 1, as big as it is, would be smaller than what they have planned for Sim Update 2. That was reiterated today in their latest development update. Beta testing for SU2 is also reportedly going to kick off soon enough.

Moving on to Marketplace, the Marketplace is still not ready yet. The update reports the following:

While Sim Update 1 is out now, one of its biggest additions, the long-awaited in-sim Marketplace, is not quite ready. Our team is making some final tweaks to the Marketplace now, and we’re excited to report that it will be launching soon.

Marketplace is such a key piece of both MSFS 2020 and 2024 that the delay is both surprising but also understandable. They need to make sure that Marketplace is rock solid for its launch.

World Update 19: Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana is also coming soon with a new release date set for March 11. Jorg mentioned that Marketplace was integral to the release of the World Update so hopefully that means that Marketplace is also on its way on the same day. World Update 19 is supposed to launch together with the CAP-4 Paulistinha, made by iniBuilds and released to us for free (2 of 4) so we’ll be looking for that too.

Check out the March 6 Development Update for more!

Next live stream

Finally, the next Developer Livestream with Jorg, Seb and Martial will happen on Friday, March 14. A web form for asking questions ahead of time is up and ready for your questions!