• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS -Everything you know about upcoming Flight Sim from Microsoft-

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DragonflightDesign

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All events are usable via SimConnect. Why are you not using the defined event IDs? Setting a variable is not the ONLY, nor is it the BEST way to make the sim do something. Events exist for a reason... at least I believe they do. :)
'Coz I'm an idiot who sometimes forgets the obvious.
 

Heretic

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So is the main scripting language still MSFS' weird XML stuff or did they implement a parser for a more widely used one like Lua or Python?
 
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us-newyork
I am being careful to just emphasize certain points of information that have been publicly shared in the development updates as the NDA is no joke.

XML (exactly from FSX) is present as a legacy-only feature to ease porting. It works just fine with a few minor caveats.

C++ / DLL gauges are not allowed and native modules cannot be loaded. A new gauge module system based on WebAssembly (shipped as llvm bytecode) is being built. This method is expressly to ease porting of existing C++ codebases and (eventually) provide high-performance features. If you want to try this now without the sdk to see roughly how much work you are going to need, go download emscripten and try to do a single-threaded build of your codebase with em++ with only libc/libc++ (no windows.h), gauges.h, and consider your usage of GDI+ which they have stated they are building a wrapper for. As mentioned by them, this is still heavily under development.

The "new" MSFS system is based on html/css graphics and typescript code via an embedded web engine using Coherent GT. This is not yet exposed through the sdk.

Most developers I talk to plan to take the Wasm route. I will not say with what system the existing MSFS planes are built, but you can guess.
 
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From what I have read there is something of an inbuilt click and drag airport design tool. It may well be that there is no need for an external tool for this sim. If it transpired there was a need then I would certainly look at that.
Thank you, Jon.
 
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The Citation X I wrote for Eaglesoft was a multithreaded gauge and I believe all of the higher level aircraft addons utilize threading. I really don't see how something as complex as the Citation X (full systems, electrical, hydraulic etc as well as renewable database and custom autopilot code) will be even remotely possible.

I know what the core sim (FSX) stored with regards nav data (waypoints) and it is woefully inadequate when it comes to accurate autopilot behavior for things like SIDS/STARS and approaches. I can only imagine how little detail will be in the new sim's data.
 

jtanabodee

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May I ask simple questions?. MSFS 2020 is not base on previous version of MS flight simulator at all, is it? Will it has backward compatibility? Or we need to redo all our works again to make it compatible with MSFS 2020
 
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May I ask simple questions?. MSFS 2020 is not base on previous version of MS flight simulator at all, is it? Will it has backward compatibility? Or we need to redo all our works again to make it compatible with MSFS 2020
From what I understand of other threads and websites I've read:
  • Sceneries have to be completly redone as it's a brand new terrain/scenery system
  • Aircraft will have some degree of backwards compatibility, but I'm guessing that may be similar to compatibility between FSX and P3Dv4 where if the aircraft has any DLL/GAU files then they will not function but XML guages will.
    However, they might need to be redone/updated anyway to get closer to the quality standard set by the default aircraft.
  • Any utility using SimConnect should work out of the box with minimal updates if any.
 

jtanabodee

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From what I understand of other threads and websites I've read:
  • Sceneries have to be completly redone as it's a brand new terrain/scenery system
  • Aircraft will have some degree of backwards compatibility, but I'm guessing that may be similar to compatibility between FSX and P3Dv4 where if the aircraft has any DLL/GAU files then they will not function but XML guages will.
    However, they might need to be redone/updated anyway to get closer to the quality standard set by the default aircraft.
  • Any utility using SimConnect should work out of the box with minimal updates if any.
I don't mind redo the work if that make MSFS 2020 a new program. If it works faster, better and flawless, it is worth all the troubles. FSX and P3D are base on the old code which is 20 years ago, aren't they?
FS2004, FSX, even P3D are a very old program. P3D seems to me a 20 years old car with new turbo, new ecu but still the old car.
MSFS 2020 is made from the ground up, totally new, right? I am not computer guy, just an average user.
 

jtanabodee

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As I can see, the weather engine is new. The satellite photos on the ground is new, derive from the server.
If MSFS2020 is still using the same database of airports in the world as FSX, P3D, it would be really absurd.
 

n4gix

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From what I have read there is something of an inbuilt click and drag airport design tool. It may well be that there is no need for an external tool for this sim. If it transpired there was a need then I would certainly look at that.
From what I've read elsewhere, several hundred folks from around the world were given the task of using the "inbuilt click and drag airport design tool" to create the non-handcrafted and higher detailed airports, all ~36000 of 'em.
 

jtanabodee

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so if you are concerned about your past 'investment', it's not good news.
Some people might decide to stay with their tons of addons instead of new investment on the new program, MSFS2020. You know, Covid19 devastated the world economy already. Like FSniners, they stay on their places until the ship sinks.
 
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netherlandsantilles
I believe from a developer point of view the "investment" ment here = time. A lot of it spent by developers learning languages and tools and building complex addons...
At least I'm glad to here XML is somewhat native in the sim although all its limitations. However lot of time will need to be invested again to learn something different and not so flexible for what I understand here....not sure yet it will be worth it, once the SDK is out we will know for sure....
 
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My question would be this.. If a developer models an airport using the tools that are available such as 3dsmax blender or sketchup, would those models in their original form from the modeling program not be portable into the new sim, or are (whoever) saying that we would need to re-model the same thing again?? why would that be? are they using some new tool to make buildings and scenery objects? I dont see that as being the case. does anyone know anything more about this? SPECIFICALLY just airport development. it would be a shame to spent the 900 hours ++ on the new airport Im doing just to find out there would be no way to get it into the new sim.
 
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My question would be this.. If a developer models an airport using the tools that are available such as 3dsmax blender or sketchup, would those models in their original form from the modeling program not be portable into the new sim, or are (whoever) saying that we would need to re-model the same thing again?? why would that be? are they using some new tool to make buildings and scenery objects? I dont see that as being the case. does anyone know anything more about this? SPECIFICALLY just airport development. it would be a shame to spent the 900 hours ++ on the new airport Im doing just to find out there would be no way to get it into the new sim.
Anyone who has access to the SDK that could answer your question is unfortunately restricted by the NDA. I'll have a stab though based on what I can see from publically available information:
There are exporters for 3DSMax and Blender (coming in the next SDK release) but probably not Sketchup.
The texturing seems to be a LOT more modern so you'll need to graduate to something to complete that stage of your workflow (Blender, Mixer, SubstancePainter) as it probably requires PBR.
I'm going to assume that there are tools external and internal to the sim for folks to do scenery packages.
 
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unitedkingdom
My question would be this.. If a developer models an airport using the tools that are available such as 3dsmax blender or sketchup, would those models in their original form from the modeling program not be portable into the new sim, or are (whoever) saying that we would need to re-model the same thing again?? why would that be? are they using some new tool to make buildings and scenery objects? I dont see that as being the case. does anyone know anything more about this? SPECIFICALLY just airport development. it would be a shame to spent the 900 hours ++ on the new airport Im doing just to find out there would be no way to get it into the new sim.
Those that know can’t tell you. Those that don’t can only speculate. We’ll all know in three weeks’ time.
 
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