Welcome back MCC friends! For our latest update blog, we’re getting ready to pull the trigger on our second public flight and we’ve got some various odds and ends to catch up on including The Scoop from the engineering trenches. You’ve been patiently awaiting more details and we’ve got ‘em, so let’s get to it!

MCC Insider Program

While I assume most who are reading this have already joined the MCC Insider Program, I wanted to make sure everyone else knows that sign-ups are once again open and ready for business. Due to some internal maintenance we had to temporarily disable new member sign-ups but that work is complete and we’re ready and eager to get even more people into the MCC Insider Program!

What does the MCC Insider Program entail? How does one sign-up (or opt-out)? Get the answers to these and many more frequently asked questions in this handy blog post.

In addition, if you haven’t been following our previous updates, I highly encourage you to take a few minutes and get caught up for some important background info about the MCC Insider Program, public flighting, and the overall project itself. Consider this a pre-requisite and required reading before you get any further in today’s blog:

Ok, all caught up? Cool, let’s get into some new goodness.

Flight #2 - Now Boarding All Rows

As you likely know by now, a critical component of the MCC update project is partnering closely with the community to get hands-on play, testing, and feedback for in-progress builds via the Xbox Insider app.

Following the conclusion of our first MCC Insider public flight (which went really well thanks to your help!) the team has been working on the next release. Today we’re happy to confirm that the second public flight is taking place this week!

Participants

For flight #2 the team is looking to roughly double the size of the participant pool that helped out in the first flight. This means that everyone who was invited to flight #1 will receive an invite again in addition to several thousand new MCC Insider Program members who have been patiently waiting on the sidelines.

This also means that most of the overall MCC Insider Program population will still not be included quite yet. As we’ve discussed before, this is a gradual ramp up that will eventually include more and more players until anyone and everyone who wants to participate is given the opportunity. For flight #2 though, we’re still keeping things intentionally limited in scope albeit double that of the last release. We still sincerely appreciate your interest and eagerness to help and we do need your support – please hang in there a little bit longer, the call will come.

MCC Insider Program members should keep an eye on their inboxes for the account they used to sign-up – invites started going out yesterday (6/4). Please note it could take up to 24-36 hours for the email to appear so please give it some time.

scope

This flight will be similar to the first in that it will once again focus on multiplayer. However, where flight #1 centered around Halo 2: Anniversary content and peer-to-peer networking, flight #2 will feature Halo 3 with the goal of validating MCC’s matchmaking dedicated servers.

As with all flights, keep in mind that this represents a snapshot of an in-progress build at a specific moment in time – which is not as current as what’s being actively developed at this very moment. This is also clearly limited in scope which means many of MCC’s features and broader offerings are not included. Participants will want check out the “Known Issues” post within the Xbox Insider App for the latest and greatest details to be aware of.

Since this flight focuses on dedicated servers, we also anticipate that some players may experience suboptimal latency or performance due to low or unpredictable regional population. Also, for the purposes of this flight, the team will be using a subset of the dedicated server data centers around the world to help keep things focused and manageable. While the flight participant lists were built with locale in mind, we’re still at the mercy of people actually having time and inclination to participate in each play session. Your mileage may vary if you live outside of North America but please do let us know if you encounter unusual performance.

Schedule

Following flight #1 we received a good deal of feedback from participants who desired more content and more variety. This time around we’re happy to report that we’ve heard you loud and clear and have built out a rotating content offering to mix things up over the duration of the flight. We’ve also added more sessions, particularly to try and accommodate players in Europe, but also because some of you just wanted to play even more.

Here are the official play times and content offerings for flight #2:

Thursday, June 7

Halo 3 4v4

11:00AM PDT - 2:00PM PDT

7:00PM PDT - 10:00PM PDT

Friday, June 8

Halo 3 BTB

11:00AM PDT - 2:00PM PDT

7:00PM PDT - 10:00PM PDT

Saturday, June 9

Halo 3 4v4 & Halo 3 FFA

11:00AM PDT - 2:00PM PDT

4:00PM PDT - 7:00PM PDT

confidentiality & FEEDBACK

Another area we received a lot of feedback around was the constraints imposed by the flight’s confidentiality requirements. For flight #2 we’re lifting the confidential barrier some which should allow participants to share feedback easier while also allowing the team to better communicate with players during the three day window.

Please note that participants are still responsible for following the rules and confidentiality restrictions outlined in the invitation email. Official surveys and email communications are still considered confidential.

Participants are encouraged to pay close attention to the MCC message-of-the-day (“Meld”) and to check to the MCC Insider Program Hub within the Xbox Insider App regularly for important info. In addition, we’ll have official pinned threads here in the Halo Waypoint forum for each day of the flight to gather player feedback, answer questions, and share timely information.

Inside Xbox

On May 17, I had the honor of joining Major Nelson and 343’s James Monosmith for a special segment on Inside Xbox, Episode 3. For the most part the conversation was very high level, consisting of an overall recap of the MCC update project and a summary of some of the key improvements and features headed to game. While most of you no doubt already know all of that stuff, if you missed the show you missed out on some fresh new game footage we captured a few days prior during an afternoon playtest.

Keen observers noticed a few things like the new menu in action, the new HDR settings (more on that below), and a quick peek of some glorious 4K Halo 2: Anniversary and Halo 3 multiplayer footage.

Check out our Inside Xbox Halo segment via on-demand right HERE.

HDR Settings

Players in the first public flight who were using an Xbox One X and a 4K/HDR compatible monitor likely already saw this sweet new addition to MCC. This is still considered work in progress but here’s a screenshot of what the new video settings configuration screen looks like:

No, Lorem ipsum dolor... isn't a new video setting. It's work in progress placeholder!

When the update lands later this year, Xbox One X players will be able to fine-tune MCC's HDR and visual settings to their personal preferences.

Intelligent Delivery

We’ve discussed this feature a bit in the past, but “Intelligent Delivery” allows the individual facets of the overall MCC package to be selectively installed by players. MCC is a large game, jam packed with content (and it could even grow more in the future), so this really is a great quality of life improvement to give players more control over the experience and their console’s storage. If you don’t care to play Halo 2 Anniversary MP or Halo 4 MP, you don’t have to install those components. Another nice bonus of Intelligent Delivery is that it will also allow players to install languages other than what their console is natively set to.

It's important to note that choosing not to install game components is an “opt out” process. This ensures most players have the needed content for co-op and multiplayer scenarios while giving everyone control over their hard drive usage and which content they want to keep installed. Once the initial launch chunk is installed, players can begin customizing which components of MCC to include or exclude, and these can be adjusted at any time.

Here’s a few work in progress screenshots of how the Intelligent Delivery system is looking in MCC right now:

This is the default configuration, with all games and components installed.

This is an example of a selective installation, with only a few game components installed.

Above is an example of default MCC language options.

This is an example of the new player-customizable language options coming to MCC.

Someone asked, “what happens if you don’t have a specific component installed but you try to join a matchmaking playlist that requires it?” One big change coming with the update is a shift away from multi-game playlists in favor of per-game playlists. If a player doesn’t have Halo 3 MP installed but joins their friend’s party who wants to jump into some H3 matchmaking, that player will get a message letting them know they don’t have the required content installed (pretty much how it used to work when a player didn’t have a specific DLC map that was required for a playlist). As a special bonus, all players will be made aware of which specific players are missing content so the host and party members can make the best decision about what kind of game to play.