Okay, I haven't tried this yet, but before I forget to post it here, I got some advice on the mailing list from Brendan Black, which should be of use to anybody else stumbling down this path:
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The method I usually follow is here:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Building_usi ... _-_WindowsThe method gets you to grab build artifacts for 3rd part libraries & OpenSceneGraph
I have verified it with Visual Studio 2017 on Windows 10 (it doesn't work with 2019 for me), for which you don't need to install any Windows 7 SDK - the VS2017 installer installs a Win10 SDK which seems to work ok. I have to say I only build 64 bit, so I can only very that a 64 bit build works.