10

February

2022

Sim Update 8 Beta News

Posted by: Microsoft Flight Simulator Team

Welcome testers! Thank you for your interest in participating in the Sim Update 8 Public Flight. Our focus in this beta will be:

  • Checking stability and performance
  • Testing against the release notes to confirm accuracy
  • Providing an opportunity for 3rd party developers to test their products in a beta environment

The Sim Update 8 beta will be available to join on Thursday, February 10th starting at 8:00am PT. To join this public test, please see the instructions below for your preferred platform.

What to Know before You Join

MS Store PC Users: There is always a risk that you may have to re-install the sim when joining/leaving a flight, so please keep this in mind before participating. When the flight ends, we ask that you manually remove yourself from the Preview. By doing so, you will get an update to MSFS with the latest public build. If you do not remove yourself from the group, we plan on automatically removing everyone on March 7th. At that point, you will get an update to MSFS with the latest public build.

If you have MSFS content installed completely on a custom path, you will have a much lower chance that a full re-install will be necessary when the update is officially released. However, if your sim content is installed in the default path selected by the in-game content manager, you may have to reinstall the whole sim when moving from the test build to the public build. We recommend that those who wish to test with us ensure your sim content is located in a custom path before joining the flight to avoid full reinstallations in the future (Details on how to do this can be found here.) The best set up would be for your store app to live on the default C: drive and sim content on a custom drive.

There will be a public forum area to submit feedback and review the release notes on Thursday, February 10th at 8am PT, so please stay tuned until then.

Microsoft Store or Xbox

  1. Open the ‘Xbox Insider Hub’ on your PC or Xbox (or install it via the Microsoft Store if you do not have it yet)
  2. On the left side, click ‘Previews’
  3. Look for ‘‘Microsoft Flight Simulator – Sim Update VIII’’ and click ‘Join’ to confirm your participation.
  4. Open the MS Store to Microsoft Flight Simulator to receive an update to your build.

If you would like to leave the pre-release test before it ends and re-install the live build, follow these instructions:

  1. Open the ‘Xbox Insider Hub’ app
  2. Navigate to ‘Insider Content’ > ‘Microsoft Flight Simulator – Sim Update VIII’
  3. Select ‘Manage’
  4. Use the radio button to select ‘Unenroll (Leave this preview)’, then select ‘Done’
  5. Wait an additional 30-60 minutes after unenrollment completes (Pending no longer appears in the Xbox Insider Hub). If not on a Custom path, you will have to reinstall the sim to restore the prior build.

Steam

  1. Open your Steam Library
  2. Right-click Microsoft Flight Simulator
  3. Click “Properties”
  4. Click “Betas”
  5. Select “flight_sim_beta – Sim Update VIII”

If you would like to exit the pre-release test before it ends and revert back to the live build, follow these instructions:

  1. Open your Steam Library
  2. Right-click Microsoft Flight Simulator
  3. Click “Properties”
  4. Click “Betas”
  5. Select “None”

Thank you and we look forward to your feedback!

MSFS Team