Asobo recently released their weekly development update early this morning, this update will be the second last before the large upcoming launch of the simulator for game consoles, namely Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S. The Xbox Series X|S version is set to release on the 27th of August paving the way for simulators on consoles.

The development team also featured a new partnership with Orbis, which is a genuinely intriguing Flying Eye Hospital! The model in the hangar is purely for visual exploration and is unflyable, with an aim to raise awareness into Orbis's mission to bring accesible eye hospitalisation across places in the world without access. The real aircraft is an MD-10 aircraft, donated by Fedex.

Asobo stated the following;

We are delighted to announce today that we are partnering with Orbis International, a non-profit organization transforming lives through the treatment and prevention of avoidable blindness, to give flight simmers the chance to virtually explore the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital.

Moving on to Asobo’s roadmap, It displays which updates are anticipated in the coming future for the simulator, apart from the anticipated availability of the simulator on the Xbox consoles, it follows a routine monotonous schedule with not much deviation than what we normally expect:

With some joyous feature requests and feedback snapshot’s also attached below, the requests which were voted, and submitted by the community to the developers for fixes and future features. Some highlights is feature additions such as support for other flying vehicles such as helicopters and gliders, South Korean language and scenery expansion (akin to Japan's world update), possibly one of the most interesting request is a "Scenery Gateway System", which presumably is taking a page off X-Plane 11's community contributed default scenery system where users outside the X-Plane development team can contribute their rendition of an airport using default assets to be included into X-Plane. Other requests revolve around the simulator's adoption of up-to-date standards such as DirectX12, opening up the weather API to developers for weather related add-ons, and support for Nvidia's DLSS technology implementation, which according to the development team is being looked at and researched. The simulator is known for its demanding system requirements, as such Nvidia's renowned super sampling technology would be a welcome relief on many user's computers.

The bugs are self explanatory, with many fixes incorporated into either a Service Update or a World Update:

The team furthermore provided various fixes and additions on the press release:‍

SDK‍

General:

We are currently investigating the last remaining issues for the upcoming update.

Dev Mode:

General:

• Console icons are now properly reloaded after the icons package has been mounted.
• Tools are now properly shut upon closing the sim.
• We now support ILS reference for runways.

Project Editor

• We fixed the disabled “next” button in the asset selection wizard when creating a new asset group.

Visual Effects Editor

• We added a Color Space Conversion node to allow you to work either with RGB or HSV.

3rd Party Updates

• As of 07/11, we have now approved 199 (+0) third parties into the in-sim marketplace and – so far 112 (+1) have released 490 products (+14).
• In total, 1,140 products (+23) have already been released in 3rd party stores and the in-sim marketplace. Beyond that, another 357 products (+7) from 3rd party developers are in production (225 announced, 132 unannounced). In total, over 1,497 3rd party products (+30) are either released or are in development.

Airports:

• 940 airports (+17) are either released or are in various stages of development.
• 726 airports (+17) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
• 408 airports (+6) have been released in the in-sim marketplace.
• 105 airports (+1) beyond the released airports have been announced.
• 109 airports (-1) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an airport is in production.

Aircraft:

• 185 aircraft (+9) are either released or are in various stages of development.
• 55 aircraft (+2) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
• 107 aircraft (+6) beyond the released aircraft have been announced.
• 23 aircraft (+1) are not announced, but the dev let us know that an aircraft is in production.

Scenery:

• 333 sceneries (+4) are either released or are in various stages of development.
• 320 sceneries (+4) have been released on the platform so far in various stores.
• 29 sceneries (-3) have been released in the in-sim marketplace..

Furthermore some very interesting additions to the In-Sim Marketplace...

• Captain Sim 777-200ER retails for $29.99, read our spectacular article here!
• Orbx Dubai City Landmarks retails for $7.99
• Summer N. Winter N. retails for $9.99
• Fayetteville Regional Airport retails for $14.49
• Unalakleet Airport retails for $14.99
• Fukuoka International retails for $20.99
• Jundai Airport retails for $6.99
• Dracena Airport retails for $5.49
  

The original post by Asobo can be found on their forums for more in-depth reading. Also worth noting, a special thanks to joe in the Threshold Discord server for providing us with the scoop!