A new roadmap update for Microsoft Flight Simulator left ground last week and landed on the Insider program. Now the development team says Alpha build 1.3.9.0 (Alpha 3) is also available. In this newest version of the game, Microsoft has added a new plane, the Boeing 747-8i.
In addition, the company says new Alpha participation invites are being rolled out.
Aviation aficionados will be happy to see the Boeing 747-8i make its debut on Microsoft Flight Simulator. However, the company says there are some known issues with the plane. For example, there are some graphics glitches, display problems, guidance system performance issues, and more. Microsoft says these problems will be resolved over the coming weeks.
Sticking with aircraft, Microsoft Flight Simulator developers also made improvements to existing planes. Among those getting a refresh at the TBM 930, A320, DA62, G58, C152, DR400, Xcub, and the C172 G1000.
Perhaps the most notable improvement is how weather interacts with the planes. Elsewhere in the Alpha 3 build, Microsoft improved airport details, and squashed some bugs.
SDK
Furthermore, Microsoft also confirmed an SDK update. The company is working with over 200 companies and over 400 developers with the SDK. In the changelog, the company confirms changes made in this release:
“On the airports side, we are both widening the scope of what can be customized in the sim (e.g. adding the possibility to blend custom aerial imagery on the terrain, creating custom painted lines per airport) and working towards simplifying the adaptation of existing assets to the new simulator (e.g. adding support for projecting meshes).
“On the aircraft side, we are working closely with 3rd party developers to ease the transition to WebAssembly and glTF. Just as with airports, we are both extending the possibilities of what can be customized and working to ease the porting of existing assets to the new simulator. We also improve our support for WebAssembly by implementing specification proposals that focus on performance.”
