Testing is already underway for Sim Update 6 for Microsoft Flight Simulator according to the latest developer update. The notes for the update have already been released and Asobo Studios are also about to start talking about their Reno Air Races add-on. Here’s what you need to know!

Sim Update 6… update

The latest Developer Update from Asobo Studios on the state of Microsoft Flight Simulator is focused on their work on Sim Update 6. Sim Update 5 and the World Update 6 patches introduced some big changes to the sim and brought with it support and the launch for Xbox. Sim Update 6 seems less monumental by comparison but the sheer number of fixes and updates listed suggest that Asobo are buckling down on solving problems – exactly the kind of thing that I think many in the community want to see.

There are some essential updates that I want to highlight as part of the patch notes:

• Several crashes have been fixed across the title
• More optimization work has been performed including performance issue with Real-time AirTraffic after a long period of time
• Improvements on offset localizer/LDA approaches for the Navdata
• Activated gust tweaking in custom weather settings
• Fixed Friends status as offline friends were still marked as online
• Fixed a bug that prevented Live/AI aircrafts lights from showing
• Terrain level of detail can now be increased up to 400 (insteads of 200) in Graphics options on PC

These are just some of over a hundred different items that are fixed or improved upon. You can read the full list here.

Reno air race update

Asobo Studios announced that they are working on an air racing addition to Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is something I’m excited to see happen and was one of the things that I wondered if the sim might expand into.

On October 20th at 10:30am PT, Asobo will host their latest Live Dev Q&A where they will be talking more about the upcoming DLC and discussing top community questions. If you have a question you’d like to ask, send it in here.

Update challenges and more

The question still to be answered with Update 6 is if the sim will have any sort of countermeasures to deal with the update problems that we saw with Sim Update 5 and World Update 6. These problems caused quite a few in the community to spend hours decoding problems and trying to find ways to get the update system to even recognize that they needed to do an update.

My suggestion to everyone is to get started on using the new Xbox App as it seems to be where MSFS is going to be moving as Microsoft reorganizes their online store presence. It seemed to more reliably pick up and do the initial update.

I’m also still fighting with crashing to desktop issues with Microsoft Flight Simulator. As it is, having anything in my Community folder (and I mean anything) will cause a .Net related crash. I’ve been chasing down a fix for weeks now and it seems likely that the problem seems to be caused by a weird interaction between MSFS and popular photo edition suite Capture One. I need these pieces of software to coexist so I’m hopeful that Sim Update 6 will solve my problems with the sim.

As a result, my MSFS flying is still limited and I’m essentially using only what’s available in the base package of the sim without my Orbx or other third party aircraft installed. Once sorted out, I hope to catch up and review some new aircraft. Stay tuned!