Introduction

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by jcomm
Amendement to the tittle

This is great news.   Hopefully most stuff from 2020 will be ready to go

16 minutes ago, ErichB said:

This is great news.   Hopefully most stuff from 2020 will be ready to go

This is documentation for the SDK, not the SDK toolchain itself. This is still reserved to marketplace developers only.

There seems to be no added or updated SimConnect functionallity.

Camera APIs are still not implemented.

Just the very old SimConnect functions.

The SimConnect SDK in P3D is light years  ahead.

44 minutes ago, rksoftware said:

There seems to be no added or updated SimConnect functionallity.

Camera APIs are still not implemented.

Just the very old SimConnect functions.

The SimConnect SDK in P3D is light years  ahead.

 Is there a highly upvoted request to modernize the Simconnect API though by the developer community? I just did a quick search in the developer forum and the closest thread that I found had 2 upvotes:

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/making-the-case-for-a-revamp-of-basic-and-outdated-simconnect-concepts/4540/12

It appears even among the developer community, it’s not strongly sought after, with only 2 upvotes on that topic. Perhaps there is another similar Simcomnect topic where there is more upvotes by 3rd party developers?

50 minutes ago, rksoftware said:

There seems to be no added or updated SimConnect functionallity.

Camera APIs are still not implemented.

Just the very old SimConnect functions.

The SimConnect SDK in P3D is light years  ahead.

I was reading the forums last night. A simple task like switching camera views without horrendous immersion killing trip through plane inards is still not even possible. All those unused legacy fsx variables /flags wasting space in cfg files. For a sim that sells for being the best looking it's not friendly to video makers! 

TRANSITION :0 NOW! 

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by sloppysmusic

Hope this will bring more functionallity to the Camera settings.

 

17 minutes ago, rksoftware said:

Hope this will bring more functionallity to the Camera settings.

 

Editing individual cameras or multiple settings is one thing. What the sim needs is a higher level DIRECTOR mode where you can place cameras in scenes and edit their interaction and transitions. You should be able to set up templates so you can view your favorite multi cam setup when you take off /land /fly by scenery with a shortcut. 

With a director mode you could create airport specific templates and sell them. Passenger/pilot views from car park to cabin /cockpit etc. 

 

7 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

This is documentation for the SDK, not the SDK toolchain itself. This is still reserved to marketplace developers only.

I did receive the info and I have zero access to the Dev.Alpha (not a Market Place partner, not a first-row dev partners obviously ;). 

The SDK seems to be downloadable for those only interested as it's barely zero value if you don't developp anything for MSFS2024.

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by vbazillio

3 minutes ago, vbazillio said:

I did receive the info and I have zero access to the Dev.Alpha (not a Market Place partner, not a first-row dev partners obviously ;).

[...]
The SDK seems to be downloadable for those only interested as it's barely zero value if you don't developp anything for MSFS2024.

It's kind of funny seeing the email say it's for MP partners only and you're not even one. Is this a screw up of sorts? Either way cool to see.

1 hour ago, Lucky38i said:

It's kind of funny seeing the email say it's for MP partners only and you're not even one. Is this a screw up of sorts? Either way cool to see.

It was a public announcement https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/microsoft-flight-simulator-2024-developer-alpha-begins-wednesday-october-23/661842

20 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Is there a highly upvoted request to modernize the Simconnect API though by the developer community?

That thread didn't get much traction, because it suggested something that not many developers think it's really required, and it would be a big task (it basically suggests a complete redesign) with no obvious benefits, and you can see there were several opposite views.

I don't think Simconnect needs a redesign, it's an efficient way to do async communication and works locally and networked and a redesign would break hundreds of apps (this for sure), without any guarantee something new will work any better.

What Simconnect needs and what 3rd party developers needs, instead, are just exposing features the simulator already has internally, and make them available through Simconnect.

Currently, the N.1 requested feature is a Camera API, and it got a lot of votes, considering this is a developer-oriented forum:

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/camera-api/3077

There are many other features missing from Simconnect (which P3D has, BTW), such an Attach objects API, a Render-to-Texture API, a PlaySound function to allow playing sounds generated on the fly (or downloaded) instead of being pre-built in a Wise-package, a way to subscribe to events at reasonably high frequency that is not tied to the visual frame rate (to limit data traffic), and all of these features won't "just" allow developers to do things that are very tricky to do now: it will allow them to do it in a more efficient way, instead of using convoluted workarounds to do things.

25 minutes ago, virtuali said:

That thread didn't get much traction, because it suggested something that not many developers think it's really required, and it would be a big task (it basically suggests a complete redesign) with no obvious benefits, and you can see there were several opposite views.

I don't think Simconnect needs a redesign, it's an efficient way to do async communication and works locally and networked and a redesign would break hundreds of apps (this for sure), without any guarantee something new will work any better.

What Simconnect needs and what 3rd party developers needs, instead, are just exposing features the simulator already has internally, and make them available through Simconnect.

Currently, the N.1 requested feature is a Camera API, and it got a lot of votes, considering this is a developer-oriented forum:

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/camera-api/3077

There are many other features missing from Simconnect (which P3D has, BTW), such an Attach objects API, a Render-to-Texture API, a PlaySound function to allow playing sounds generated on the fly (or downloaded) instead of being pre-built in a Wise-package, a way to subscribe to events at reasonably high frequency that is not tied to the visual frame rate (to limit data traffic), and all of these features won't "just" allow developers to do things that are very tricky to do now: it will allow them to do it in a more efficient way, instead of using convoluted workarounds to do things.

This is quite insightful Umberto - Thanks.

Out of interest, what sort of feedback or engagement do you have with Asobo in terms of these sorts of suggestions?