Recomendation prior to beta

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Jaws2002

No need for all that voodoo. Clear your cahce, back-up the personal files (controls and stuf like that) and enjoy the beta.

I concur and the reason is quite simple.

The next patch is beta, which means that it doesn't get installed automatically through Steam, but manually by the user.

If you uninstall and reinstall through Steam, you'll have exactly the same version, same files, etc that you had before uninstalling. Steam installs the latest release version, not betas, so uninstalling/reinstalling will just spend an hour or two of your time for no change in the game's files at all.

In both cases, you would have to manually extract the beta patch on top of the exact same files, which are the files included in the last release version.

The only difference between uninstalling or not, is that a "fresh" install will be "blank", meaning that

1. the configuration files (control settings, graphics options, etc) will be back to default settings after reinstalling and
   
2. any custom missions and skins will have vanished

In other words, simply moving your config files and extra missions/skins outside their folders (or just renaming them), followed by telling Steam to verify integrity of the game files, will yield the exact same files without having to waste time uninstalling, downloading and reinstalling the entire software.

Plus, like always, clear your cache folder before launching the sim with the beta patch for the first time, to force the game to rebuild its shader cache.