Open Beta Question

[13sq*Axe]

Greetings! New to DCS and want to do some Multiplayer WWII play. I'm sure my installation is the 2.8 "Stable" version. I see there is another version, 2.8 Open Beta. I see the download at the DCS site. Is it just a simple matter of downloading and installing the Beta? Will I have to import the modules I own? Can I have both versions installed on the same rig? Thanks in advance.

[razo+r]

9 minutes ago, 13sq*Axe said:

Greetings! New to DCS and want to do some Multiplayer WWII play. I'm sure my installation is the 2.8 "Stable" version. I see there is another version, 2.8 Open Beta. I see the download at the DCS site. Is it just a simple matter of downloading and installing the Beta? Will I have to import the modules I own? Can I have both versions installed on the same rig? Thanks in advance.

If you install the beta while having the stable installed, it will copy most files over and download only the different files. 

You can have both at the same time but generally makes little sense, as it takes up twice the space with almost no advantages. So if you think you have plenty of disk space, you can of course keep both but it is normally recommended to only have one and use the command lines thingy to switch from stable to beta and back that way. 

If you still want to install the beta, you have to consider copying over the input files for the modules you own so you dont have to map all keys again. 

[13sq*Axe]

Thx for the quick reply. So there is a command prompt method to switch back and forth between the two versions? 

[Maverick87Shaka]

On 1/9/2023 at 10:46 PM, 13sq*Axe said:

Thx for the quick reply. So there is a command prompt method to switch back and forth between the two versions? 

Not really recommend to make several jump between builds but yes, it's possible.

In this post you have a very detailed procedure for many different actions, but basically you need to open a prompt command in the BIN folder of your DCS installation, and run DCS_updater with some arguments depending on what you want to do.

On top of this, you can also consider to use the really great tool DCS GUI Updater, to manage your installation.
 

 

[13sq*Axe]

Thx for the replies. I did get the DCS Updater Utility GUI. It seemed pretty straight forward in the "advanced" section to "switch" versions. Clicked the "Switch to Beta" button. However nothing seemed to change. Looking at current version numbers, it seemed the Open Beta and Stable versions were the same?  Does that happen?  My install version number didn't change either. That being said I was able to join some multiplayer servers. 

[Maverick87Shaka]

23 hours ago, 13sq*Axe said:

Thx for the replies. I did get the DCS Updater Utility GUI. It seemed pretty straight forward in the "advanced" section to "switch" versions. Clicked the "Switch to Beta" button. However nothing seemed to change. Looking at current version numbers, it seemed the Open Beta and Stable versions were the same?  Does that happen?  My install version number didn't change either. That being said I was able to join some multiplayer servers. 

Currently ( Jan 18th, 2023 ) both OpenBeta and Stable release was aligned on the same exact build number. That's why you didn't notice any changes.
To check if you're Up to date, refer to this link: https://updates.digitalcombatsimulator.com/ where you can  find also history and changelog of each version.

it's happens times to time that stable and open beta are aligned, but they normally stay on the same version for short period, I would say something like 1 month maximum.