We were expecting Sim Update 5 to be deployed this week. According to Microsoft’s April 23rd Weekly Briefing, that’s no longer the plan. The update has slipped to next week, with the team citing a last-minute AMD frame generation issue discovered during the public beta as one of the reasons for the delay.
It’s a minor slip by most standards, but worth noting given how close things appeared to be. We’d been following the beta cycle since February and our most recent overview painted a picture of an update clearly in its final stretch.
The briefing confirms the team expects to validate readiness by Monday, at which point a launch date can be confirmed. One final pre-release build is still planned for public beta participants before that happens. Two new builds have already shipped since last week’s briefing: 1.7.21.0 on April 17 and 1.7.22.0 on April 21. Steam users may have spotted a third build, 1.7.23.0, though that one has no user-facing changes and was developer-facing only.
Alongside the AMD fix, the team is also finalising validation of the Oversized Cargo Rating feature, previously referred to as Heavy Cargo Rating, which is being renamed ahead of release.
It’s a few more days of waiting, but given the scale of what SU5 brings, including AAU4 aircraft overhauls, VR improvements, and the new weather radar, it’s better to ship it right than ship it fast. We’ll have full coverage the moment it goes live!
