Every time a new sim update gets released for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, the same question pops up in the community: how long will Asobo and Microsoft keep looking after the older sim? For now, the answer is still “a while longer.” Sim Update 17 for MSFS 2020 is in public beta, and while it’s a compact update, it carries one change that anyone flying near water will notice: the water masks from MSFS 2024 have been ported back to the 2020 edition.
The 2020 sim doesn’t get as much attention as MSFS 2024, for obvious reasons. Still, it got Sim Update 16 in August 2025, followed by the small Sim Update 16.1 stability patch in March this year. SU17 is the first full numbered update since then, and it moves the sim to version 1.40.1.0.
Water from 2024, shorelines in 2020
The most noticeable change should be the one Microsoft is asking testers to watch most closely. According to the release notes, the MSFS 2024 water masks have been brought over to MSFS 2020, and the team wants pilots to keep an eye out near coastlines, islands and lakes for misplaced or missing water, incorrect shorelines or unexpected terrain.
Water masking has been a sore spot in the sim for years. Back in 2023, Asobo talked about water masking during a developer stream and said improvements made for the new sim would also find their way back into 2020. SU16 already started down that road by adjusting how water polygons behave and aligning the Bing Maps data with the 2024 dataset. SU17 goes a step further by bringing the 2024 masks over directly.
And because this touches the whole planet, the beta phase is where it will be tested properly. If you have a favorite coastal airport or island hop, this is a good excuse to go and fly it.
A small feature many have asked for
The second change is small but has clearly been on the wish list for a while. Microsoft says that, following community feedback, the sim can now display the sim rate in-game. When the rate is set to anything other than 1, it appears on the HUD below the compass. You change it with the Increase and Decrease Sim Rate commands, which can be mapped in the Controls options.
Default profiles for 16 newer controllers
Hardware gets a bigger share of the notes than you might expect. SU17 adds default input presets for recently released peripherals on both PC and Xbox, and the list covers four brands:
Honeycomb: Alpha Flight Controls Lite and Bravo Throttle Quadrant LiteThrustmaster: Sol-R Flightstick/HOTAS, TCA Sky Yoke, T.Flight Hotas 5 and T.Flight Hotas NeoTurtle Beach: VelocityOne Flightstick II, VelocityOne Dual Throttle and VelocityOne HOTASMOZA: AB6 and AB9 FFB bases, AY90 and AY210 FFB yoke bases, MRP rudder pedals, MTLP take-off/landing panel and MTP throttle panel
This is good news for console pilots in particular, since the Xbox has no easy way to load third-party profiles. Microsoft is asking owners of these devices to test them during the beta and report any problems with the default bindings.
Fixes for developers
The rest of the notes are aimed at add-on developers. SimConnect gets two fixes, one for a crash when requesting unknown NavData and another for a random issue where the sim stopped sending some messages. The Scenery Editor no longer glitches painted lines above roughly 11,000 elements, and a WASM bug that could corrupt the returned string from get_name_of_name_variable has been resolved.
Before you join
The usual beta warnings apply. There’s always a risk of having to reinstall the sim when joining or leaving a beta, and that the risk is much lower if your sim content lives on a custom path rather than the default one. The recommended setup is the Store app on the C: drive and the content on another drive. Leaving the beta before it ends will likely mean a reinstall for Store users, and in multiplayer you’ll only see people on the same build as you.
Microsoft has also noted that participation in 2020 beta testing has dropped since MSFS 2024 arrived. In the SU16.1 release notes, the team said telemetry from flighting had become less reliable for that reason. So if you’re still flying the 2020 sim regularly and you’re comfortable with the risks, your feedback on this one is more important than usual.
To join on PC or Xbox through the Microsoft Store, open the Xbox Insider Hub, go to Previews, select Microsoft Flight Simulator Beta and choose the “Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 – Sim Update 17” group. On Steam, right-click the sim in your library, open Properties, then Game Versions & Betas, and select “flight_sim_beta – Sim Update 17”. If you stayed in the SU16 beta and never opted out, you’ll be moved to this build automatically.
Microsoft hasn’t given a release date for the final version yet. If you’ve moved on to the newer sim, you can follow everything happening there on our MSFS 2024 updates page.