Yesterday we hosted another Developer Livestream featuring our regular panel of Jorg, Seb, and Martial. They answered many questions from the community and also announced several future updates for Microsoft Flight Simulator including two new City Updates, a new Famous Flyer bundle (more info below) and the next Local Legend, the Boeing 707! In case you missed it live, you can watch the full video on YouTube here:



The new Famous Flyer bundle is available from the in-sim Marketplace now and consists of two aircraft, the C-47D Skytrain and the Waco CG-4A glider. Both of these aircraft played an important role in World War II’s Normandy landings (Operation Overlord) which occurred exactly 80 years ago today on June 6, 1944. In recognition of this anniversary, for every purchase of the Famous Flyer 9 pack made between June 6, 2024 and July 5, 2024, Microsoft will donate 100% of each sale to the USO (https://www.uso.org/). More information about the USO is available by contacting them at info@uso.org.



– MSFS Team

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Hot off the heels of last week's release of Sim Update 15, this week saw two more new additions to Microsoft Flight Simulator!

City Update VII: European Cities II is now available as a free download from the in-sim Marketplace. After installing this package, you can enjoy updated scenery for Barcelona, Madrid, Monaco, Nice, Porto and Stockholm.

Also available from the Marketplace is the next Local Legend series aircraft, the Short SC.7 Skyvan. You can learn more about the plane affectionately known as the "Flying Shoebox" on our website here. We have also released an Aircraft Discovery Series video on YouTube to help simmers become familiar with the Skyvan's features:



As a reminder, our monthly Developer Livestream was pushed back by one week. Originally scheduled for May 29, it will now be held on Wednesday, June 5 at 10:30am PDT (1730 UTC). Follow our official Twitch channel to be notified when the regular panel of Jorg, Seb, Martial, and special guests go live to answer questions from the community and discuss the future of Microsoft Flight Simulator. If you missed your chance to pre-submit a question in advance, we will also be taking questions live from viewers in Twitch chat. See you then!

– MSFS Team

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Microsoft Flight Simulator introduced City Update 7: European Cities II today which features notable locales throughout Europe: Sweden’s Stockholm, France’s Nice and neighboring Monaco, Portugal’s Porto, and Spain’s Barcelona and Madrid. This latest update to the vast and growing Microsoft Flight Simulator experience is certain to captivate and inspire.

The Microsoft Flight Simulator team and its partners captured these renowned cities in exquisite detail using recent high resolution aerial imagery, digital elevation data, and TIN (triangulated irregular network) surface modelling. This latest release invites simmers to choose their preferred aircraft to explore these vibrant locales, from the French Riviera to the skyscrapers of Stockholm.


Continue reading about City Update 7!

Sim Update 15 is available now! You can read the full release notes here. In addition to over 200 bug fixes and other improvements, highlights of SU15 include:

• Airbus A320neo V2
• Touch/gryo controls on Xbox Cloud Gaming
• Updated Garmin G3X Touch avionics from Working Title

To go along with the Airbus A320neo V2, we have also published a new Discovery Series video. You can watch it on YouTube here:



As always, we want to give a huge thanks to all the volunteer beta testers from the community. Thank you so much for your feedback and bug reports throughout the SU_15 public test so we could make this release the best it could be.

In last month’s Developer stream, we announced that Top Gun: Maverick would be removed from Microsoft Flight Simulator on May 25th due to our license agreement with Paramount coming to a close. As we were all a bit sad about this news, we contacted Paramount and both parties agreed to extend our agreement for another two months. You can continue to download and enjoy the Top Gun: Maverick expansion until July 25th. Happy flying!

Speaking of Developer Livestreams, our next one is coming up in a week on Wednesday, May 29! Tune in to our official Twitch channel at 10:30am PDT (1730 UTC) to hear our regular panel of Jorg, Seb, Martial, and special guests answer questions from the community and discuss the future of Microsoft Flight Simulator!

Also next week, we are launching a new City Update and Local Legend aircraft! City Update 7: European Cities 2 includes enhanced imagery for Barcelona, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Nice, Porto, and Stockholm. Local Legend 17 is the Short SC.7 Skyvan, known affectionately as the "Flying Shoebox". Both City Update 7 and Local Legend 17 are scheduled to release on May 28.

Finally, please note that the regular Marketplace release of new and updated products for May 23 has been postponed until tomorrow (Friday, May 24) because of the Sim Update 15 launch. We will update this post with the new/updated Marketplace releases on Friday.

– MSFS Team

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If you are playing on PC, outdated packages in your community folder may have an unexpected impact on the title’s performance and behavior.
If you suffer from stability issues or long loading times, move your community package(s) to another folder before relaunching the title.
How to install a new update safely

• Microsoft Flight Simulator is now available to play with touch/gyro controls on Xbox Cloud Gaming!
  
• Airbus A320neo (V2) is now available

• Fixed an issue where friends occasionally appeared duplicated in the friends list
  
• Improved performance:
  
  • Improved FPS, particularly where the FPS was low
    
  • Reduced stutters, particularly after long gameplay
    
  • Reduced loading times
• Various crash fixes across the title
  
• FPS display memory usage now displays allocated virtual memory rather than used physical memory pages. This more accurately reflects the memory effectively used by the simulator

• Fixed an issue preventing the Content Manager from loading while the player was offline

• Resolved an issue where users were experiencing a loss of audio for ATC instructions and other aircraft communications while the AI copilot continued to respond
  
• Fixed some navdata packages not correctly loaded
  
• Improved usage of available FlightAware data to feed live traffic in the sim
  
• Increased the maximum number of aircraft visible in free flight
  
• Improved spawn condition of air traffic planes to increase live traffic at airports
  
• Improved AI behavior of live traffic planes on and around airports

• Moved the iced water threshold up from 27cm to 72cm in order to limit the amount of wrongly frozen water in the world. Example: Swiss lakes, Norwegian fjords, etc.

• Fixed an error in the “ILS Approach” training, the CDI and the CRS info are now both displaying the correct heading.
  
• Fixed Bush Trip and live event achievements
  
  • Corrected achievements are: Fire and Ice, Anemoi, Goldrush, and Decathlon

• Fixed an issue where the MFD navigation data bar DEST field displayed the incorrect airport in certain cases
  
• Fixed incorrect calculations for MFD navigation data bar fields related to the destination (DTG, LDG, FOD) in certain cases. These values are now also consistent with the airport displayed in the DEST field
  
• Fixed an issue where GPS signal could degrade inappropriately during long flight sessions
  
• Fixed an issue where the flight plan could become corrupted after removing an approach in rare cases
  
• The HSI to/from indicator now displays the correct indication while the active navigation source is FMS instead of always indicating TO
  
• The system will no longer automatically switch CDI source from FMS to LOC during ILS/LOC approaches unless the autopilot’s LOC mode is armed and ready to capture the localizer course

• Comprehensive visual overhaul of the avionics for accurate font, symbology, look, operation, and feel
  
• Built-in support for Direct-To and point-to-point VFR flight planning and navigation capability
  
• Support for IFR navigation when paired with a compatible external navigator (such as the WT GNS530W/430W)
  
• Support for aircraft-specific EIS and MFD Engine page layouts, including optional Lean Assist and Fuel Calculator functions

• Fixed an issue where the PFD could become partially unusable on initialization and required a flight restart
  
• Fixed a bug where the XPDR keypad entry would break when the XPDR mode selector button was pressed while already in XPDR mode
  
• Fixed an issue where the MFD navigation data bar DEST field displayed the incorrect airport in certain cases
  
• Fixed incorrect calculations for MFD navigation data bar fields related to the destination (DTG, LDG, FOD) in certain cases. These values are now also consistent with the airport displayed in the DEST field
  
• Fixed an issue where the last digit of COM frequencies could not be entered with the control pad
  
• Fixed an issue where the Control Knob events did not reset the Control Mode reset timer
  
• Fixed approach minimums GCU keypad entry not working
  
• Fixed an issue where the flight plan could become corrupted after removing an approach in rare cases

• Fixed an issue where the autopilot would not function correctly after loading or reloading the GNS instrument in the middle of a flight session (e.g. when hot-swapping instruments in certain airplanes)
  
• Prevent instruments not loading correctly when hot-swapping
  
• Fixed an issue where GPS signal could degrade inappropriately during long flight sessions
  
• Fixed an issue where the flight plan could become corrupted after removing an approach in rare cases
  
• Added support for configuring the index used by the LNAV Computer using the <LNavIndex> panel.xml tag; where this is not set it will default to 0 to preserve support
  
• Added support for setting the autopilot max bank angle using the <MaxAPBankAngle> panel.xml tag Where it’s not set, this will default to 20
  
• LNAV data simvars will now be published with indexes according to the LNAV Computer index
  
• Added support for disabling the autopilot through XML configuration using the <DisableAutopilot> tag
  
• GNS units no longer require an internal autopilot (or autopilot of any kind) to automatically switch CDI source from GPS to VLOC during ILS/LOC approaches
  
• The logic to automatically switch CDI source from GPS to VLOC during ILS/LOC approaches now runs independently on each GNS unit. This fixes some incorrect behavior that could be encountered if two GNS units in the same airplane were configured to maintain independent flight plans

• FMC: Fixed FPLN RECALL not working on the co-pilot FMC
  
• Added plugin system to allow third party developers to customize and extend the functionality of the WT21
  
• Added alternate style option for the artificial horizon on color schemes via CSS variables (documentation follows soon)
  
• Removed CJ4 specific code from the WT21 and moved it to CJ4 plugins
  
• CDU: Ported CDU to new framework in Avionics SDK to enable extensibility by third party developers

• Corrected a tooltip which indicated a value in Celsius degrees rather than angular degrees

• Added multi rotor support for helicopters (Chinook, dual rotor, etc.)
  
• Improved performance of glass cockpit heavy airplanes (ex. Boeing 747) that use the Coherent/JS tech stack[
  
• Initial work on improving plane and livery model matching for live traffic aircraft. It will now try to partially match aircraft types of the same airlines, if a specific livery or model is not installed. As a last resort it will try to fall back to an airline that generally serves the current airport or region
  
  • Known Issue: The nameplates of AI traffic can show a wrong aircraft type ICAO
• New high accuracy physics system to enable vibrations and micro movements
  
• Enabled new soft gears on the Cessna 172 and Guimbal Cabri G2
  
• Optional soft ground collision model for tires / flexible gears
  
• More accurate ground contact model
  
• Ground Contact Resolution improvements
  
• Improvements to ground handling and ground collision physics for the Cessna 172 and the Guimbal Cabri G2
  
• Fixed an issue that caused some P-51 Mustangs to lose power on full throttle

• Improved functionality of multi-engine helicopter governors and engine trimmers (see SDK for more details)
  
• Multi-engine helicopters: it’s now possible to control the governor switches and engine trimmers for each engine individually. See SDK for details
  
• Multi-engine helicopters: it’s now possible to bind governor switches and engines trimmers via CONTROL OPTIONS menu for each engine individually

Click here to continue reading the Release Notes!

We are pleased to share an updated Development Roadmap with you this week! You can find it below.

On Tuesday, we released a new test build (1.37.18.0) to those community volunteers enrolled in the Sim Update 15 public beta. We expect this to be the final SU_15 release build unless there are any blocking issues identified by the community beta testers.

Earlier today, we also released a small update to all players. This update includes new navdata (AIRAC cycle 2405). Additionally, for players enrolled in the SU_15 beta, today's update also includes the next round of approved airport improvements submitted by World Hub closed alpha participants. These airport updates will be made available to all simmers with the full release of SU_15.


– MSFS Team

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On Tuesday, we announced that Sim Update 15 will be delayed for a little longer while the team works to resolve a few remaining issues which we consider release blockers. Delivering a Sim Update of very high quality is extremely important to us, so we are taking a bit of extra time to make sure SU_15 will be positively received by simmers.

Also on Tuesday, we released a new pre-release test build to those players enrolled in the optional SU_15 public beta. You can read the release notes for this build (1.37.17.0) on our forums here. Notably, this build includes a bug fix for players on PC using DX12 which was previously causing some airport ground scenery to display improperly. This build also includes a fix to a bug introduced in the 1.37.15.0 test build which impacted players on Xbox by preventing add-on aircraft which use WASM from functioning correctly.

As always, we would like to thank all the volunteer testers from the community for your feedback and bug reports. Whether you're helping to test SU_15 or using the current release build, we wish everyone a great weekend in the virtual skies. Happy flying!

– MSFS Team

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Public beta testing for the upcoming Sim Update 15 continues with two new builds released to opt-in community testers this week. On Monday, we released test build 1.37.15.0, and on Wednesday we released test build 1.37.16.0 which added a small number of other changes.

Please note that we are aware that the .15 test build introduced a bug that is preventing third-party add-on aircraft which use WASM from functioning correctly on Xbox. We are working to have this issue resolved in the next beta build. We are also carefully tracking feedback from Xbox testers who have reported that performance and stability has decreased in .15 compared to the previous .13 test build.

Last week, third-party developer Just Flight released the PA-38 Tomahawk for both PC and Xbox. This add-on plane has been receiving great reviews from simmers thus far, and yesterday our Community Manager SeedyL (a licensed pilot who completed his real-world PPL training on a Tomahawk) hosted a livestream on Twitch with developers Martyn and Mark from Just Flight to demonstrate the features of this single engine GA plane. In case you missed it live, you can watch the VOD on Twitch here.

– MSFS Team

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Yesterday, our panel of Jorg, Seb, and Martial plus special guests from Working Title and iniBuilds appeared on our latest Developer Livestream. If you missed catching it live on Twitch, you can watch the replay on YouTube here:



In addition to answering dozens of questions from the community, some of the other highlights from the broadcast include:

• Overview from Working Title on the improvements to the G3X avionics coming in Sim Update 15 (SU_15)
• Presentation from iniBuilds about the Airbus A320neo V2, a free aircraft for all players on all platforms launching alongside SU_15
• Announcement of City Update VII: European Cities II which includes updated scenery for:
  
  • Barcelona
  • Madrid
  • Monte Carlo
  • Nice
  • Porto
  • Stockholm
• Announcement of Local Legend 16: Short Sc.7 Skyvan ("The Flying Shoebox") by developer iniBuilds

Both City Update VII and Local Legend 16 are targeted for release on May 28.

Also announced during the livestream was an update on the Sim Update 15 release date. While we had previously revealed a tentative launch date of April 30, we now think an additional week of development time is necessary. This will be the last Sim Update for Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) prior to the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 later this year (but not the final Sim Update for MSFS2020 ever -- SU_16 is planned for early 2025), so the team really wants to make sure SU_15 in an excellent state before we release it.

In Marketplace news, the team feels like they have the backlog under control and can now begin accepting new developers into the Marketplace. We have a very lengthy list of pending applications and can't approve all of them at once, so in order to help us prioritize the developers most desired by you, the community, we are asking for your feedback. Please see this thread on our forums where you can share your feedback on which developers you would most like to see added to the Marketplace.

– MSFS Team

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On Tuesday, we launched two new releases!

• City Update 06: Southwest Germany is a FREE download from the in-sim Marketplace that enhances the scenery in Germany's Baden-Württemberg state. Please see this page for more information.
• Local Legend 15: Dornier Do 31 is available from the in-sim Marketplace for USD $14.99. You can learn more about this experimental VTOL plane from Germany here.

Also earlier this week, we released a new Xbox-only pre-release test build for simmers enrolled in the optional Sim Update 15 public beta. This build (1.37.13.0) improves performance and stability on Xbox Series X|S consoles. PC players enrolled in the beta will not receive this new build as the changes are for Xbox only.

There was also a small update released to all simmers earlier today. This release includes updated navdata (AIRAC cycle 2404)  plus improvements to over 150 airports submitted by community volunteers participating in the ongoing World Hub closed alpha test. You can read the full details on our forums here.

Our next Developer Livestream is coming up next week on Wednesday, April 24th at 10:30am PDT (1730 UTC). Don't miss this chance to hear our regular panel of Jorg, Seb, and Martial answer questions from the community and discuss future updates coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator. We are currently reviewing all the pre-submitted questions from the community and will ensure the most common topics are addressed by our panel. If you missed the opportunity to pre-submit a question, don't worry! As always, we will also be taking questions live from Twitch chat during the stream. The livestream will be broadcast on our official Twitch channel, so please follow it to be notified when we go live if you have not already done so.


Finally, if you follow @MSFSOfficial on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, you may have noticed that we've been running an MSFS Madness tournament over the past three weeks where you, the community, voted for your favorite aircraft in a series of head-to-head matchups. From a starting field of 64 aircraft from the Standard, Deluxe, Premium Deluxe, Game of the Year Edition, and 40th Anniversary Edition, plus every Local Legend, Famous Flyer, and Expert Series aircraft, voters selected the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner as the winner! We hope everyone who participated enjoyed MSFS Madness! You can see the entire tournament bracket with the community's choices in each round below.



– MSFS Team

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