In a totally surprise announcement, Microsoft shared that Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition has received a new beta update. The update can be enabled through Steam by opting-in into the beta. This beta branch has been made available so the Microsoft team can obtain valuable telemetry data that will help them in the development of their new flight simulator, that’s expected to arrive sometime next year. FSX: Steam Edition was released in 2014 (FSX itself dates back to 2006) by Dovetail Games. After the unfortunate demise of their Flight Sim World, Microsoft obtained the rights to FSX back. FSX: Steam Edition has an average player count of about 3300 on Steam (last 24h), with peaks to the mid 4000’s and dips to around 2000 players.
Microsoft also updated Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition with some bug fixes and the return of a long lost (but popular) feature. Live weather is now supported once again through the simulator menu when selecting weather. It should be noted that some users have reported some add-ons not being compatible with the beta branch, though we haven’t been able to verify this.
Changelog
- Turbine
- Resolved issue in N1 values where some settings were set to zero
- Fixed issue where fuel flow not saved and set to 0 when started in the air
- Agent radar
- Resolved in flight issue which resulted in intermittent crashes when using navigation way-points
- Conversion
- Impression fixes when converting knots to meters per second
- Piston
- Small fixes to oil pressure table
- C172 oil pressure changed to start with a valid value
- Live Weather
- Reintegrated Live Weather
- When a weather station METAR line reading is failing the data will now be extrapolated from the weighted mean of the closest available METAR sources, instead of resetting to default weather