In a lengthy forum post, the team at Asobo Studios have released their highly anticipated World Update III For Microsoft Flight Simulator, bringing various fixes and a plethora of additions to the United Kingdom.

Microsoft is focusing on the United Kingdom with this update to the simulator, stating, “Take flight into a region rich with tradition, culture and heritage,” and “the splendor of the United Kingdom and Ireland is on full display with new dramatic upgrades and visual enhancements.”

Along with this update, numerous fixes were applied across the simulator, bringing improvements to the SDK, fixing issues such as crashes, improvements to aircraft, and much more. You can view the full changelog below.

WORLD

• Several terrain spikes have been fixed, including incorrect cases of water elevation issues.
• Water masks have been updated across various locations in the world
• Reduced the frequency of water artifacts appearing on cliffs
• Noise issue affecting clouds has been fixed

VR

• The ‘Activate/Deactivate VR’ button is now always displayed in the main menu (bottom left corner of the screen) when a VR headset is plugged in. If no controls are displayed on this button, then it means that no controls are bound to this action.
• When the toolbar is opened, it does not block interactions anymore with other menus displayed in front of it.
• The cursor doesn’t jump anymore when moving across the Options menu in the cockpit.
• Gray boxes don’t appear anymore when using the ‘Travel to’ feature in VR.
• After leaving VR mode, the sim window is no longer forced on top and the player can drag and drop any other window over it.

PLANES

• Fixed induced speed calculation bug with bi propeller engines
• Fixed the plane crash detection when landing on iced water with crash detection ‘ON’
• Fixed swapped screens in DA62 TestPilot version
• Fixed VS Knob Turn not working on the Airbus A320Neo
• Improved flaps system of aircraft: Aircraft creators can now move the wing surface’s position and camber with each flap system at each flap level
• Improved ground effect wing to ground interaction system to avoid pitch dip at rotation on some aircraft

NAVIGATION

• Latest AIRAC cycle has been integrated and is now available

INPUT

• CH ECLIPSE YOKE default preset have been added
• Fixed Thrustmaster TCA Quadrant ENG 1+2 don’t start engines

SDK/DEVMODE

DEV MODE:

• New version of the console is now available
• Fixed an issue related to UTF8 encoding in the BGL compiler

SCENERY EDITOR:

• New feature to group, rename, re-order, hide and lock items in the scene list
• Fixed freeze during saving
• New airport light system
• Add a button in airport properties to generate taxiway signs
• Improve heightmap edition
• Don’t lock runway profile extremity
• Fix taxiway sign size (wasn’t correctly serialized in BGL)

AIRCRAFT EDITOR:

• Fixed an issue with the saving of “static_thrust”
• Added a new button in the Camera section of the aircraft editor to teleport the current developer camera to the position, rotation and zoom of the selected one.
• Creation of a new tool to edit only a camera file (cameras.cfg) : it matches with the camera section of the aircraft editor

WASM:

• Security vulnerabilities in the WASI layer have been reported and fixed
• Fixed StringFormat conversion to NanoVG alignment in GDI+ layer
• Reworked MouseAircraft left gauge to provide clearer information

SIMCONNECT:

• Fixed flight load/save (SimConnect_FlightLoad / SimConnect_FlightSave)
  

Photogrammetric cities are also being added to the United Kingdom, such as London. Numerous new airports are also arriving in the simulator with this new update, such as Liverpool and Land's End Airport, both which are pictured above.

A lengthy list of new points of interest was also provided; some of these include Old Trafford, a plethora of castles, the London Eye, and much more. You can view the full list via the original announcement.

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s World Update 3 is now available to download via the marketplace after the initial update upon opening the simulator is completed. It was also stated that some third-party add-ons might not be compatible with this update, and thus moving your community packages to a separate folder is advised.

You can view the source post and the full Points of Interest list via the Microsoft Flight Simulator website.