A new development update has been released on Microsoft Flight Simulator’s website, alongside a new roadmap for insider users. July 16th’s blog post begins with a message from the developers to the community:

“It’s been just over a year since we announced the next iteration of Microsoft Flight Simulator and embarked on a journey with the community to bring this product to market. While we are now just over a month away from launch, our journey with you has just begun.”

“We will continue working closely with the community. We will continue listening and reacting to your feedback and suggestions. We will continue updating our website, documents (e.g. Development Roadmap/Feedback Snapshot/SDK Updates), and working collaboratively with the community to build this product/platform/franchise.”

“We are truly better together.”

Moving onwards, the next topic addressed was invitations for the simulator’s closed beta run. Beginning July 23rd, invites will be sent out to new users - existing alpha testers will get access to the closed beta automatically.

The Flight Simulator Marketplace was next up on the agenda, a clear focus point of today’s update. Today, a new partner program was launched for third party developers to get involved with the product’s in-built store, which allows approved partners to sell their products from inside the simulator.

There’s no cost to sign up for the program, but developers must be approved before being able to sell addons. Store margin has not been disclosed.

“We firmly believe that the new built-in Marketplace provides a great opportunity for you to reach more customers than you may be able to reach today. Our goals and aspirations with Microsoft Flight Simulator are to further expand on the success of FSX, which has sold millions of copies, and that even more people will experience the simulator through Xbox Game Pass for PC. The Marketplace allows simmers to purchase content without ever leaving the simulator, resulting in significantly reduced friction to complete a purchase.”

“The Marketplace will operate under an ‘Agency’ model, which means that you, as the content creator, will set the price for every piece of content you submit. Becoming a partner doesn’t alter your ability to sell your content on your own websites and storefronts. Just like with FSX, you can continue to sell your content outside of our Marketplace. Becoming a Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace Partner essentially unlocks another channel for you.”

You can sign up for the partnership program from this link - developers are required to to fill out an application form and provide the relevant details to Microsoft. Aside from being ‘approved’, the developer is yet to speak about whether any quality control will take place prior to products being sold on the marketplace.

For developers, improvements to the SDK are on the horizon, in addition to a number of changes already made in the past week. Changes since July 2nd’s update include:

• Documentation in the areas of airport services, jetways, ground vehicles at airports & simVars
• A new sample demonstrates the edition [sic] of custom jetways.
• We added the full source for the DA62 aircraft as a more complex example that third party developers can inspect and learn from.
  

Video tutorials concerning audio and airport lines have been added, in addition to some refinements to SimConnect to maintain compatibility with coming versions of the simulator.

Finally, we move on to the roadmap, which, for the first time, shows the months of August and September - post-release of the simulator. The next items are expected on July 23rd, which concern beta invites, a new alpha feedback snapshot and a partner showcase.

Closed beta is pencilled in for July 30th, whilst feedback snapshots for closed beta are expected in early August, alongside more SDK news for developers. Post release of the simulator in the middle of next month, further SDK updates are planned running into September, which speaks to the fact that the software development kit may not be complete upon release. The next roadmap release is due in mid-September.

News regarding the new simulator spiked last week with the announcement of the product’s release date and new pricing tiers, splitting the simulator into Standard, Deluxe and Premium Deluxe editions. See all that and the full aircraft and scenery lists in our article covering the events.

Additionally, a number of third party developers have made statements in wake of the announcement. Giants Orbx were the first to make a move, followed by the likes of MK-Studios, Gaya Simulations, UK2000 and X-Plane’s Verticalsim Studios.

Learn more about the launch in a previous article.