Halo Infinite is finally coming out this holiday, but before then, select Halo Insiders can now join a technical preview by 343 Industries to test the brand-new features on the game"s multiplayer side. Although server issues held the launch back a little, the first ever flight for Halo Infinite is now active across PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S, with it running from today until 10AM PT on August 2.
Insiders will be battling against bots in 4 vs 4 Slayer matches across the Live Fire, Bazaar, and Recharge maps during the test. As the test progresses through the weekend, the difficulty of the bots will ramp up and the map rotation will change.
In an interesting twist, 343 says it will be enabling Social Arena Slayer for player versus player matches at the tail end of the flight if some engagement criteria are met. In the meantime, players are encouraged to go after those bots with a vengeance.
Also being tested in this flight are weapon drills from the Academy training section for 12 guns, the battle pass (with free credits) and menu UIs, as well as the revamped Halo Waypoint experience (vNext) across the web and mobile platforms.
The known issues of this flight can be seen here, which include a particularly nasty one that enters players into rounds with only three players, with the final player being added a minute into the match. Updating graphics drivers is recommended too. 343 pointed at the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.7.2 driver that released this week specifically to get a large performance boost on AMD graphics cards.
343 has also made available helpful pages with flight installation instructions, a rundown of content, and active play sessions in the Insiders portal in Halo Waypoint. Keep in mind the website will only work for those who have received an invite for this preview session.
There still may be some hiccups in the Waypoint invites department or the Xbox Insider Hub app, and 343 is working on fixes. PC players still waiting on their code or unable to access Waypoint to activate the flight can head here and scroll down to see if they have received a "July Tech Preview" Steam key for redeeming.