ALPHA BUILD 1.2.5.0 is now available!

Please make sure to launch Alpha build, check for updates, and install most recent Alpha update.

Welcome to the 1.2.5 version of the Microsoft Flight Simulator Alpha! In this update, you will find new content, bugs we’ve addressed, and an updated list of known issues.

A note from the development team:

First let us start off by saying “thank you”. We truly appreciate all of the amazing feedback we’ve received since the last Alpha release.

For the build notes, we have the following sections to suit the interest levels of our community, after this introduction we have the new content, below that the bullet point of changes, and for those who wish to have a more technical breakdown, members of the team have given an editorial on certain aspects of the sim.

You will notice that we’ve made several fixes based on your feedback (Review patch notes below). Your feedback is integral to our development of Flight Simulator, and we encourage everybody to join in, providing feedback via the Weekly Feedback Testing Category.

Based on the large amount of feedback regarding peripherals, peripherals support has been improved, and we’ve added more device binding presets. Please note that due to these changes, the previous mappings from will no longer work with this updated Alpha. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Finally, we know there have been a lot of questions regarding airliners, and we’d like to take a second to address the current lack of airliners. We are hard at work putting on the final touches and want to make sure we get the core functionality of the airliners “right” before we release any into wild. We promise that they are on their way, and we will let you know as soon as they’re cleared for departure.

Thank you for being a part of our Alpha, and keep that feedback coming!

-Microsoft Flight Simulator Team-

New Content

Cessna 152 is now cleared for takeoff!

Training Missions: These missions will take you through the Basic Controls, Attitudes and Instruments, and Take-off, Level flight and Landing.

Sedona Landing Challenge

“Groups” functionality added to multiplayer

Add friends to find them on the world map and can click to join them

Live Events are time-limited activities that we plan to switch out with different event types often.

Planes

Glass Cockpits – Multiple bugs fix

Cockpit Occluders

Grass, trees, clouds are no longer visible inside the planes

Icing fixes and improvements

DA40 NG and DA62 – Altitude Knob added on Pilot side G1000

DA62 – Improved flight model

TBM 930 – Improved flight model

Airports

Bug fixes include:

Airport buildings

Removed Building on runways

Removed Vegetation on and around runways

Improvements to existing airports:

Parking Spots placement

Jetway placement (Not final)

Ground markings

Airport Life improvements

Improved parking spot settings based on plane types

Air Traffic behaviors improvement

Some airports were reported as missing have been added back in for this version:

KPHX

LFRN

KIAH

WSSS

LICC

KPHL

MUHA

KSAN

KMSP

PHNL

KBOS

HECA

ZBAA

ATC

ATC general improvements have been made

ATC options and application to flight improved

Cameras

Cockpit camera

Improved the Focus mode to be more accessible

Alllowed camera speed & momentum tweaking in the menus

Added controls to translate the camera left/ right

Chase camera

Added 4 more quickviews

Drone camera

Improved the “Lock” mode behavior

Improved reset position feature

Smart Camera

Allowed smart camera to target other players

Flight Model

Handling/friction improved for a more accurate behavior on ground

New ground effect allowing for a more realistic flaring

Plane performances tuning

Multiplayer

Friend groups

Add friends – use the Add Friend icon on the top of the menus

Your Friends are now represented by an icon in the Freeflight World Map; click on them to join them

To change MP preferences, go to the World Map and select Flight Conditions

In-game traffic nameplates now apply to other users

Player Representation – Anyone using your plane will show up in the same aircraft as yours – if they are using a different aircraft than yours, they will appear as a “generic” aircraft.

Peripherals

Controls menu update

Improved the Essentials filter list

Improved the calibration menu (added curves visualization)

Player’s input presets management (create and manage multiple inputs preset for each device)

Additional default input presets :

Thrustmaster

T16000M (Already in Alpha1)

TWCS (Already in Alpha1)

TPR (Already in Alpha1)

Warthog (Already in Alpha1)

T-Flight HOTAS One, X & 4

Logitech

Extreme 3D Pro

Flight Yoke System

Flight Throttle Quadrant

X52

X56

Virtual Fly

Yoko “The Yoke” +

TQ6 +

V3rnio TPM

Ruddo +

Honeycomb

Alpha Flight Control

Various bug fixing & improvements

UI/UX

Weather, Traffic, and Multiplayer settings are now in a Flight Conditions Panel that can be found in the freeflight world map

Flight Plan settings improved

General bug fixes

Improved UI accessibility when navigating the HUD

Worldmap navigation and search functionality improvements

Worldmap VFR and IFR selection has been fixed

Various bug fixing & improvements

Overall, improvements made to stability and performance.

Flight plan approach waypoints displayed and followed

Altitude waypoint constraints displayed

Weather display has been improved

Multiples improvements to autopilot and auto-throttle

Fixed Trim from running too quick

Grass and water not going through cockpits

Weather

Weather fixes made to Live-Weather settings and Conditions

World

Water improvements: Update on ocean to improve numerous reported elevation issues

Visual improvements have been made on grass

Improvements on vegetation

Biomes

Tree Visuals

Offline textures improvement

Wind impact now on grass and trees

Updated our auto-generation of the buildings in the world to be more realistic in representation

Night lighting Improvements

Added night lighting to buildings in photogrammetric cities where there was none before

Improvements to street lights

Added wind turbines

Known issues

Some jetways are misplaced at airports

Black stripes can be visible on the side of different world tiles

Trees sometimes overlap with buildings

There are missing buildings in Chicago-O’Hare airport

There are missing buildings in Frankfurt am Main Airport

FPS tends to drop after the end of a loading sequence

FPS tends to drops during intro cutscenes

Low FPS (10 to 20 FPS) in big airports when on the tarmac, both on the take-off and landing

There are possible FPS drops when moving the camera around the plane

Objectives can fail to show any inputs if they were previously cleared by the user under Controls

Panels previously undocked from the toolbar can appear enable on any Activity

There are issues with the TTS voice on the Take-off Flight Training when using the Female Voice

The TTS voice during the Take Off Flight Training audio and subtitles are mismatched

We still display some debug subtitle-text with TTS audio on the Landing Flight Training

Planes can teleport 900 – 5000 FT above when returning to freeflight from any Landing Challenge

The ‘‘Apply the Brakes’’ objective fails to get completed after the player applies the brakes during that Landing Tutorial

Objectives can break using the despawn /respawn at the start of the Take Off Flight Training

The TBM930 engine shuts down after a teleport

Intermittent weather bug that can sometimes create unrealistic gusting winds, more likely to hit this when the user changes settings mid-session.

HUEN main buildings are not spawning

Autopilot can become inoperable when switching between Vertical Speed and Altitude in All Aircrafts.

Switching instructor models mid flight (in tutorials) will not switch the instructor voices.

A look into the minds of our pilots and engineers!

We have worked on some of the causes for ground instability. In FSX Ground Effect was calculated once per aircraft at the CG of the aircraft. The closer the CG got to the ground, the more the aircraft’s lift coefficient was scaled up (up to 25%). To get more realism, we changed this to calculate the ground effect separately for each surface of the aircraft. This reflects reality better as one wing may be closer to the ground than the other and be more impacted by ground effect. Also, because the FSX ground effect was still referring to the CG coordinates, we now calculate the collision distance between each individual surface and the ground. And with this fix we now get a different and better lift coefficient scale for each surface. This helps ground stability because when the plane starts rolling on one side, that side immediately gets closer to the ground and then gets more ground effect. The other side immediately loses ground effect. This tends to push the aircraft back toward a level horizontal position.

We have worked on roll stability, which is the consequence of many different aspects of an aircraft. Including dihedral, wing sweep, CG and wing position. One particular aspect we added is that high wings have up to 5% more “effective” dihedral giving them more roll stability. So, we added a system that automatically adds “effective” dihedral depending on the vertical wing position. This adds more roll stability to our all high wing aircraft (C172, C152, GRAND CARAVAN, …). This does not however affect low wing aircraft. Mid wing aircraft will get a little bit of this. Low wing aircraft however already usually have a higher actual dihedral which compensates for this. For all high wing aircraft, there is now improved dynamic roll stability. The effect is not super strong, but from a 30° bank, they will tend to slowly return to a neutral bank, the strength of the effect fades as the bank approaches zero. This helps with an overbanking tendency and improves roll stability.

Improvements have been made to takeoff trim, and the effects of wind when on the ground, which makes take offs more realistic and significantly improves the wheelbarrowing effect that sometimes happened.

Work was also done to improve the effects of winds and turbulence with all weather.

We’ve also been working hard on peripherals. While still WIP here are some updates:

Categories are minimized by default

Added a button to collapse/expand all categories

Categories keep their state (collapsed/ expanded) when switching devices

Improved controls settings menu performance (but more WIP)

Improved sensitivity menu (curves displayed)

Essential controls sorted

Added user input preset management

Better default mappings for more peripherals

We know there’s more to do and the team is working on things such as: