A few days ago we had the October 2025 Developer Stream from Microsoft and Asobo. We had questions answered, new products revealed, and lots of details on all kinds of different items. The T-38, Boom XB-1, Red Bull racing, updates on the old Reno racing, the ATR update, career mode, EC-135 helicopter update, all new Avidyne avionics, and even the An-225 gets a mention.

Developer stream answers our questions

Jorg, Seb and Martial are back for another Microsoft Flight Simulator developer Q&A and in it we got some questions answered and there were a few presentations and additional details revealed throughout the hour and a half long presentation.

One of the interesting items to note right away was a short discussion on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. While the driving force of development is clearly behind 2024 these days, Jorg revealed that they intend to do a 16.1 update (focused on the nVidia Streamline DLL crash) and they intend to do Sim Update 17 aimed at launching somewhere in the summer of 2026. City and World Updates will continue to be simultaneous and more 2024 aircraft will be coming to 2020 along with new first party aircraft as well. So MSFS 2020 continues to soar alongside its newer sibling which is great to see.

Performance discussions

Various questions have come out about the performance of MSFS 2024 and a portion of the discussion today was dedicated to that with explanations from Seb about how they’ve managed to gain performance improvements (measured in milliseconds per frame – which add up over the long run) thanks to various changes to how multi-threading and parallelization are approached. The Q&A is a bit more technical but suffice to say that they are seeing performance improvements and, separately, VRAM improvements as well.

We’ve learned that efforts to bring the Bush Trips back to MSFS 2024 are under development now with a scheduled release sometime in 2026. We’ve also learned that Red Bull air racing mode is planned for release this December while the team are also now in Roswell looking at the course for the new air racing series (which has moved from Reno). One way or another, the old Reno Air Racing series looks like it will return in one form or another.

Aircraft discussions: EC 135, ATR and more

We have some aircraft updates that were answered too. Nemeth Designs EC-135 was part of the Local Legends series and currently has some significant flight model challenges. Its being worked on and a new build was released recently. Hans is busy with the ATR updates with bug fixes and features for the 2020 version and is working on a 2024 native version – with new liveries and variations that 2024 allows.

Sim Update 4 is going to be a big push on aircraft fixes. Not every aircraft is going to be 2024 native but Jorg says that “they should at least work.” Indeed quite a few first party releases have issues with 2024 so this sounds good.

Aviator edition is part of the impetus here where the entire collection of Local Legends and Famous Flyers was meant to be included, however, some of those have serious bugs or don’t work at all. There are 70 aircraft that have updates that have been submitted with hundreds of change items for SU4.

Famous Flyer 13: T-38A Talon

Blackbird Simulations has indeed been revealed as the developer behind the T-38A Talon for Microsoft Flight Simulator. A few of you in the comments and on social media guessed correctly!

Blackbird has provided T-38 simulations for the US Air Force and is now providing their expertise to the aircraft in MSFS. The Q&A includes a demonstration by Colin from Blackbird showing off the start-up and it certainly looks like an authentic sequence to get us up and running with the jet. Looks fun!

Marketplace and other discussions

One of the interesting points that came up in the Q&A was on the Marketplace. The iniBuilds A340’s Marketplace exclusivity has re-opened the discussion in the community around the perception that Marketplace updates are slow. And they were in 2020 but Jorg tells us that for 2024 “we have, by and large, completely got out of the way.” The only exception are WASM based aircraft, which the A340 is, where a DLL is created. But he says that the rest of the process is as streamlined as they can make it.

Career mode is getting an update in Sim Update 4 and Heavy Cargo missions will be unlocked for the first time. The question was specific to this but hopefully this means that other fixes and improvements to Career mode are on the way as well.

Famous Flyer 14: Boom XB-1 and Avidyne avionics

Aviation start-up Boom is looking to make a new generation of supersonic airliner in the United States and their Boom XB-1 is the prototype for an eventual airliner follow-on. This is the subject of a new Famous Flyer that is being developed jointly by Working Title, who contributed a couple of new avionics systems, and FlightFX has done visual assets and flight model.

FlightFX’s Marwan Gharib talked through some of the unique features of the aircraft including a fuel balance system (meant to keep the centre of gravity in a reasonable spot while the aircraft burns rapidly through fuel at full afterburner). The aircraft also requires a 35 degree nose up landing angle so a camera is needed for maintaining visual with the runway. Accurate hydraulics, electrics, fuel, and flight surfaces are all part of the product.

Chris Burnett from Working Title confirmed that the aircraft is going to include the Avidyne IFD 550 and 540 on left and right of the aircraft along with a custom MFD programmed by Boom and reproduced here in the aircraft. Even better, the Avidyne avionics will be coming in SU5 for developers to use as a sim attachment meaning that we’ll see an alternative to the Garmin glass displays more easily available to developers and ultimately to us. So that’s great!

Praetor update

We have a few updates on the Embraer Praetor that Working Title is doing the avionics and systems for with Asobo doing the art. Chris from Working Title was back on the screen to talk about that project saying that the Proline Fusion avionics are complex and taking some time to do. The art is largely done and everything else is progressing “as quickly as we can.” Jorg says it will come next year sometime. This is an Expert series aircraft so we have some high(er) expectations for this one.

An-225 update

A short little note here but there is some news around the An-225. This aircraft, done by iniBuilds has apparently just seen a new developer build put into place and they are hoping to include it in Sim Update 4 if its stable. Good news.

One more surprise on the way and roadmap

There was also a few chuckles and some tight lips but Jorg has confirmed that we’ll see a surprise before the end of the year. This ends speculation that the surprise was the PlayStation 5 announcement – its not. So it’s something else.

We also have the roadmap update graphic right here so you can see what we’re still expecting going into the end of the year. Let’s end it there but do check out the complete Q&A if you want to see the rest!