Making missions for Flight Simulator X using the "Object Placement Tool" included in the Software Development Kit is easier than editing XML by hand, but we're the first to admit that it's not an inuitive tool to use. Some good news: a more robust third-party mission editor was just released, and it makes mission development and testing a lot easier for developers.

"FSX Mission Editor" was created by Jim Keir and is published by FSAddon Publishing. Some of the most useful features of the tool are a visual interface, full error checking, and synthetic voices for creating placeholder dialog. There are three versions available: freeware, payware (with even more features), and a version licensed for the creation of missions to be sold commercially.

Whether you already devleop missions for FSX, or have been curious but hesitant to get started, the process just got a whole lot easier!

You can learn more about "FSX Mission Editor" and download it at SimMarket.

A dedicated member of the community, Luis Féliz-Tirado, was kind enough to provide us with a “How to” article about the Autogen Annotator.  

Unsure which version of the SDK to develop with? Having problems with the Tools menu?

Check out our new article about choosing the right SDK version.

There's also a nice article about configuring the SDK at FSDeveloper.com

Though somewhat inconsistent, here's my latest smorgasboard of (hopefully) valuable information for developers:

The folks at FreeFlightDesign were kind enough to let me know about their site, the tutorials they provide, and even a GMax sample aircraft to help add-on developers who use GMax get a better idea of how to build 3D aircraft models.  Lots of great stuff on this site that help to explain how to use the SDK.

Quick tip on building SimConnect applications on a native 64 (x64) bit OS:

Some folks compiling SimConnect Add-ons on a native 64 bit OS have reported the following error when attempting to compile their program:

"BadImageFormatException loading the Microsoft.FlightSimulator.SimConnect library"

This has been determined to be caused by the default compilation configuration settings on Visual Studio products when installed on a x64 OS.

Here is a nice blog entry with a table outlining compatibility between platforms.   FSX is configured as a 32 bit application (x86) – so any consumer of SimConnect.dll has to be compiled with x86.

The workaround is to use "x86" in the configuration manager instead of "anycpu" or "x64" when compiling a SimConnect Add-on.  The x86 version of Visual Studio Express 2005 should work fine on any 64 bit OS. 
 
Its a bit undiscoverable as by default the configuration manager does not show up in Visual Studio C# Express - here is how to change from "AnyCPU" or "x64" to "x86" configuration (from VS Express Support Site):
 
1. Open Tools->Options 
2. Check “Show all settings” 
3. Check “Project and Solution->Show Advanced Build Configurations” 
4. Open Build->Configuration Manager 
5. Select the combo box under the “Platform” column for the project you want to target x86 
6. Choose “NEW…” 
7. Under “New Platform” select x86 
8. Click OK, then Close 
9. Note that the Toolbar combobox for Platform Configuration now lists both "x86" and "AnyCPU" and has x86 selected 
10. Building, running and debugging will now build x86-only binaries. You can switch back to the "AnyCPU" configuration to change this if necessary.

This should also work on native applications as well, though I have not confirmed this behavior. 

Hope this helps!  I welcome any feedback that helps me help the community!

Like the title says ...

First off, Technical Art Lead Adrian Woods has a great post on his blog about frame rates and visuals - check out Performance Art.

Next, I came across a site with some great development info, so I want to point out the Tutorials page at FS2X.com.

Finally, there's a new Dev Tip article posted with some good information on landing gear compression - have a look!

As part of our ongoing effort to better collaborate and communicate with the development community, we've asked for folks to submit articles related to the creation of add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

The first of these articles, "FSX Emissive Textures and How They Relate to Virtual Cockpit Lighting" was submitted by Bill Leaming of Eaglesoft fame. Bill's paper has been through review by our internal team, and is intended to help other developers understand our virtual cockpit lighting technology.  We encourage you to read this article if you are at all interested in adding lighting effects to your virtual cockpit.

A big thanks to Bill for being the first to take on a role like this!  If you would like to submit a paper for publication, and believe you have the technical knowledge and writing skills to contribute a write up similar to this one, please send us your abstract and a brief bio of who you are and what your experience is with developing add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

In an effort to better support our customers and our community, we're releasing an update to Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Service Pack 1 (SP1). We had three main goals in developing this update:

• Improve performance
• Fix bugs blocking third-party add-ons
• Fix egregious bugs

In addition to updating the run-time FSX executable for performance and general bug fixing, we've also made some significant changes to the Software Development Kit (SDK) and related run-time components for improving the third party extensibility mechanisms.

You can read more about SDK SP1A in this article.

You can download SDK SP1A itself here.

Adam Szofran, our resident expert on developing the terrain system inside FSX, has put together a very comprehensive (and technical) article about how we manage to allow the generation of a world-wide virtual reality in real-time.

Not for the faint of heart, some of the concepts here assume a relatively deep understanding of coordinate systems, graphics technology and the use of spatial systems! We hope a good portion of you can really sink your teeth into this one. Take a look.

A few years ago I wrote and published a paper with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) on how we model the 6-Degrees of Freedom (6-DOF) required for simulating aircraft motion in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

We continue to make improvements from version to version, but the underlying concepts and algorithms used remain constant. I think it's important for our customers (especially developers) to understand that we use the same, high fidelity equations of motion to simulate aircraft behavior that is universally employed throughout the commercial aviation industry. We employ some interesting techniques to improve real-time performance, and to simplify the number of flight model definition parameters that are required.

I've done my best to keep the information as straight-forward and readable as possible, with a good dose of historical information thrown in as well. Check it out.