Black Square Updates for MSFS2024
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All updates to MSFS 2024 will be free. I appreciate your sentiment :)
I saw some confusion regarding the Professional Series after one of my new posts, while we're all discussing things here. Those new aircraft, which some might call "updates" of the Steam Gauge Overhaul Series will not be free, though they will come at a discount for existing owners. The Professional Series aircraft represent around 1,000hrs of work each, and roughly a doubling of the scope of each aircraft. In short, my goal was to create new aircraft that I could be really proud of. The longer story is as follows...
When MSFS 2024 became available, I immediately assessed the difficulty of porting the Steam Gauge Overhaul Series to the new sim. When it became clear that this would take an abundance of effort, if it was possible at all (I was thoroughly thwarted at every turn), I decided it would be far smarter to work on standalone aircraft with loads of new features, rather than spend the same amount of time just to get already aging software into a new simulator that would continue to fight me every step of the way. Creating standalone aircraft frees me of many limitations, increases maintainability drastically, and allows me to focus on new simulation experiences that otherwise would not have happened. I hope the majority of you agree with this approach, but I thought I would take the time to explain it more completely.
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For the bonanza, baron, and king air, i took the downloaded version from just flight and places into my community folder in 24. then enabled the official 2020 versions within streamed library. for the caravan, the bksq version appeared as a selection. and all i had to do was, again, enable the streamed 20 caravan. but for the duke, i tried copying, to anywhere i could think and it never pops up as a selection and cannot be enabled from community folder. i hope this helps
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@Black-Square It is fair that we get a discount for the analog series. They will be better. Once we are there, everything will be fine. Appreciate ur consideration. It is just unfortunate that the old models are problematic.
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@zman7887 Also. I have been doing some testing. What has worked for me is:
For tha analaog series: Baron, Bonanza, King Air and Caravan.
Copy the community from 2020 to 2024 and copy the official 2020 to the community 24. Besides that u have to give preference to the community files over the streamed, otherwise images wont load. All 4 work.For the Dukes and TBM just copy the community folder from 2020 to 2024.
They ALL work!!!
Thx
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First off - thank you for bringing all of these fantastic aircraft onto the Xbox, especially with the PNS50 support. Not too many developers have been pushing that set of avionics over and it’s my personal favorite. Everything maps really well with the Turtle Beach Velocity One setup.
Unfortunately since I am locked to only the marketplace - are you going to continue to send and release updates into the 2024 marketplace? I’ve been reading what a frustrating experience it has been for developers to deal with.
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Long time lurker, first time poster. Let me second the above message about bringing these aircrafts to Xbox. They truly are a delight to fly.
I’m not a real life pilot, and I’m not the most knowledgeable about simulated aircrafts either. It’s why I stay away from airliners; I can follow a checklist and press a button, but if I don’t understand why I should press that button, then it’s much less interesting to me. This led to my hesitation of buying any Black Square products, even though I’ve only heard good things about them. I simply thought they were too advanced, for me to enjoy. I shouldn’t have worried. I bought the Dukes, and with the help of the well written manuals, that explain things so someone like me can understand them, and also the excellent tablet that visualizes the systems, I’m truly having the best experience. Thank you!
With regards to the GTN 750, there are multiple aircraft that technically support them, but with no way of actually downloading the GTN units to Xbox, that “support” is worth very little. The ideal situation would, of course, be, if they could be downloaded from the in-sim Marketplace, so they could receive updates as well. I haven’t followed any discussion why they aren’t available there, maybe it’s because they use a subscription based business model, and Microsoft wouldn’t get a cut out of that. Purely speculation on my part there.
Regardless, the inclusion of this unit with the Dukes is greatly appreciated. It really shows an understanding of the situation. Always with an attention to details. I can’t help to think why the KLN 90B wasn’t included as well, though, since this unit also can’t be downloaded on Xbox. Does the license not allow bundling of this unit perhaps?
Looking forward to the updated versions, though the Dukes already play nice in 2024. Eagerly awaiting the Professional series, as well. With regard to the Starship, that thing looks too advanced for me. But I trust Black Square to once again help me overcome the obstacles and provide an excellent learning and flying experience.
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@ploodovic said in Black Square Updates for MSFS2024:
...with the help of the well written manuals, that explain things so someone like me can understand them, and also the excellent tablet that visualizes the systems...
This is music to my ears. Thank you so much for sharing this. I spend a tremendous amount of time on my manuals, and this is exactly why I do it. I refer to them as "a little ground school in a box" to fellow pilots. Unfortunately, I can't spend years writing them, so I know they could still be a lot better. I worry that maybe 1% of my users actually read the manual, but I hope that 1% get enough out of it to make up for the other 99%. The Starship is a passion project of mine, though, so I suspect that will be the best manual I ever write.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but the only reason the KLN90B is not included in the marketplace build is because I simply forgot to ask the developer if that was a possibility. He has since created a marketplace-ready version for me, and it will be included in the next update for the Dukes.
I would absolutely love to offer MSFS 2024 Marketplace versions of all my products, but I have recently been informed of some requirements that might be extremely onerous given my development pipeline. I have not fully explored the implications yet, but I suspect I will be morally obligated to comply so that they Dukes can be enjoyed by MSFS 2024 exclusive purchasers.
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@Black-Square you can’t just tease us like that with the Starship manual. Are you sure it’s still only going to be ~180 pages though? I don’t think anyone would be opposed to it being a little bit longer ;)
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@Black-Square said in Black Square Updates for MSFS2024:
This is music to my ears. Thank you so much for sharing this. I spend a tremendous amount of time on my manuals, and this is exactly why I do it.
FWIW, I read the Velocity XL manual a few times back to back, really appreciate you putting the effort. It let me to watch as many videos as I could find about the aircraft as well, to get more out of the sim experience. I didn't know anything about this aircraft until I discovered it in MSFS.
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@pequenyo What do you mean give preference to the community over streamed? How do you do that? I can't get mine to work (they used to work but something happened after SU1) - Now only the seats and part of the cockpit load but it's incomplete.
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@Sir_PickleRick that is exactly what happened to me. Some modules are duplicated, asobo and black square. U have to choose which one. I Find out that giving always preference to the community folder worked. Besides that I had to delete the official baron folder because there is a version in the deluxe edition that brought that problem every time I started the game. U delete the official from the community because the deluxe exists (only for the baron) I checked when I wrote last time and with the beta all modules worked. Takes a bit of tweeking that preference but u should be able to find out. Let me know if works for u…
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@pequenyo Hey. So I found the solution. I used to copy the 2020 asobo base planes (Baron, Bonanza, Caravan and King Air) into a Official 2020 folder in the 2024 packages directory. For some reason, that stopped working but I just copied them into the community folder and now they work fine. Well, at least the King Air which is the one I mostly fly. Damn Asobo just making nonsensical changes for the hell of it.
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@Sir_PickleRick Something similar happened to me-- I had the Caravan, TBM, and King Air all working fine until some update screwed them all up. The Caravan just wouldn't load, the King Air had a persistent autopilot failure (breaker popped), and the TBM wouldn't start. The solution was to move them from the Official 2020 folder to the Community folder, and I haven't had a problem since.
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Hi, I'm enjoying the Dukes in 24 (following moving the folders across from sim to sim). Looking forward to the updated "official" version coming along.
I suspect this is something that can be safely disregarded as I'm flying an unsupported version in 24 effectively but in case it's useful to you, I'm using the newest version of the KLN-90 and I suspect it's causing WASM crashes, it's fine with the WT GNS430/530.
Not expecting a fix or guidance, just in case I'd stumbled on a bug - thanks.
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Hello all, SU2 update available! Release your aircraft ? @Black-Square
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@Black-Square , Any new information for the release regarding the C208 Pro?
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I'm planning on publishing a news update at the beginning of next week regarding 2024 and Starship, by the way. I just wanted to let you guys know.
