Tuesday, October 15th 2024

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Uses up to 180 Mbit/s of Internet Bandwidth in Flight

Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty demanding title. From the very high-performance system needed for ideal system specifications, the game now uses up to 180 Mbit/s of internet bandwidth while the user is in flight and the terrain is loading. This is equivalent to as much as 81 GB per hour of internet data, which is a nightmare for users with a data cap. Data caps are often standard in US homes, with internet providers imposing their own rules on up to 1 TB of uncapped traffic, which considerably slows down after that. The new Flight Simulator 2024 may be a bit much for users who don't have powerful systems and data plans.

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 requires 30 GB of storage for the game. The alpha version comes in at only 9 GB, meaning that it is pulling much of its resources from Microsoft's servers, thus requiring this massive bandwidth to operate smoothly. Microsoft recommends a 50 Mbit/s internet connection for the final game, meaning that the final 30 GB install will pack more textures, thus lowering the massive load on Microsoft's servers. Of course, the 180 Mbit/s is the peak load, and the lowest measured load is around 10 Mbit/s. The game typically runs below 50 Mb/s, but this peak value is quite noticeable.
Sources: Compusemble (YouTube), via Tom's Hardware
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33 Comments on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Uses up to 180 Mbit/s of Internet Bandwidth in Flight

#26
LittleBro
ImoutoSeeing all the complaints it gets I wouldn't be surprised and even more taking into account how it's optional.
It may be optional, but AFAIK, MSFS 2020 has more than 2 PB (yes, it's petabytes) stored world data files in the cloud. So it's optional till you make a flight to another destination which will need to be cached. Rolling cache overwrites oldest data.
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#27
venturi
It would be better to be able to select and chose regional maps or areas. If one want to run 100% off line
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#28
Wirko
venturiIt would be better to be able to select and chose regional maps or areas. If one want to run 100% off line
The most they're ready to reveal right now is probably this:
Now we integrated everything into the cloud, and it is all streamed and kept into a rolling cache on the hardware. - source
If I'm to guess, a large part of the 30 GB game download is a low-res map of the entire Earth, which can be used offline. Since the minimum storage requirement is 50 GB, there's 20 GB reserved for the rolling cache.
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#29
unwind-protect
That cache is guaranteed to be buffered on disk, so the SSD wear argument is valid.

Now, it is not the SSD in my Macbook Pro, which is really expensive. But for that game you really don't want a write-once SSD like it would normally suffice for Steam installs.

Would be nice to have the on-disk cache in a configurable directory so that you can put it on a RAMdisk if you happen to have enough RAM.
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#30
Makaveli
LabRat 891Most of the western world cannot even get 100Mbps internet?
most?
LittleBroThat game is the SSD killer. That's roughly 2 TBW per 24 hours if everything gets cached onto a drive.
Better have some good NIC with CPU off-load capabilities.
So better to load this on a SATA SSD then a Pcie drive?
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#31
LittleBro
MakaveliSo better to load this on a SATA SSD then a Pcie drive?
Better have option for setting cache for this game to an entirely separate drive for swapping purposes.
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#32
Uns1gn3d_C0d3
ymdhisDid the articles writer really mixed up the most basic unit of measurement in technology?
It's unfathomable. A human being making a mistake? I've heard of such thing's happening, but I've never witnessed them firsthand. I'm completely disillusioned.
Posted on Reply
#33
z1tu
ymdhisDid the articles writer really mixed up the most basic unit of measurement in technology?
Calm down lil bro, you coming in 4 hours after this was addressed doesn't make you seem cool
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Oct 15th, 2024 15:13 EDT change timezone

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