Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Dives into Long Loading Times and Negative Reviews

[AleksandarK]

Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator 2024 just launched, and it already appears to be riddled with problems. When internally testing, we ran into some issues regarding long loading times and eventual errors without getting to the game. Additionally, many others confirmed that they were experiencing problems. Launched on 08:00 am PT on November 19, the simulator has faced widespread server infrastructure issues affecting player access. CEO of Asobo, maker of this Flight Simulator franchise, Sebastian Wloch, has released a public statement via video addressing the widespread technical issues that plagued their latest game release. According to Wloch, while pre-launch testing had successfully simulated concurrent player counts of 200,000 users, the actual launch revealed critical weaknesses in the database cache system that weren't apparent during testing.

Additionally, the negative reviews stemming from these issues have piled up. On Steam, the game currently has 2,865 reviews, only 500 of which are positive. The remaining 2,000+ are overwhelmingly negative, with many users not being satisfied with the gameplay and quality of the release. The game's infrastructure is powered by Microsoft's Azure cloud, which is also not good marketing for Microsoft as the Azure platforms should signal better infrastructure scaling and stability. While these issues should be cleared in the long run, the short-term consequences are turning the launch into a colossal failure, as gamers expected more from this release. Lastly, the alpha version of the game was notorious for the massive internet bandwidth hog, causing up to 180 Mbit/s load.



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[neatfeatguy]

Maybe it's just me, but anyone that thought having a flight simulator game heavily based off of streaming it would be a good idea to buy it, well....you got what you paid for. A big cluster.

I'd like to think people would have started to learn by now to not support this kind of game play experience of requiring online connectivity for single player games, but I guess a lot of people are still pretty daft.

 

[sephiroth117]

They made the client too thin for real.

Even the aircrafts were not locally installed once you install the game via steam/MS store.

Either you invest in some good Azure architecture to back your game or you stop with thin clients altogether...

I don't think it's a good design for a game, even a sim, to go all 100mbps-recommended persistent online,...even for that single player career sim experience.

Many simmers know they need hundreds of GB of local storage,..and it's not like SSD are super expensive. I don't understand why they changed this aspect over MSFS 2020 that deeply...rather than persisting on SSD, their infrastructure is continuously streaming, even with rolling caches and all, it's an absurd design.

 

[Vayra86]

Maybe it's just me, but anyone that thought having a flight simulator game heavily based off of streaming it would be a good idea to buy it, well....you got what you paid for. A big cluster.

I'd like to think people would have started to learn by now to not support this kind of game play experience of requiring online connectivity for single player games, but I guess a lot of people are still pretty daft.

I dont know in this particular instance. There is a lot of data in those detailed maps. I think its an experiment.

 

[capdauntless]

And the next step, as already announced, is windows streamed to a thin client for work. Wouldn't want to have any ability to do anything locally...

 

[Hankieroseman]

I'll wait until I get my "Aviator" Package from Germany but I flew 2020 yesterday w/o too many problems. DCS works well and mapping bindings with the controls is tedious work in MSFS and Eagle Dynamics.

 

[Vincero]

Surely this is one area where local / client based generative AI hardware and software could actually bridge the gap in terms of user experience, with semi-procedural 'AI'-driven generation of terrain and landmarks in place using low-resolution installed data until photorealistic assets can be streamed in place. There isn't a whole lot of use for those NPU units outside of very specific single tasks - this seems to be something that might actually be useful.

 

[bubbleawsome]

As far as I’m aware you’re given the option to download areas of the map permanently to local storage. This doesn’t excuse all of the server issues or not having the planes local, but streaming the HQ landscape in does make sense to me.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

As far as I’m aware you’re given the option to download areas of the map permanently to local storage. This doesn’t excuse all of the server issues or not having the planes local, but streaming the HQ landscape in does make sense to me.

It doesnt make sense which then begs the question, why is it an option in the first place? Unless its meant to be used as an internet speed benchmark.

 

[cal5582]

And the next step, as already announced, is windows streamed to a thin client for work. Wouldn't want to have any ability to do anything locally...

welcome to the ens**itifcation era of windows.

 

[capdauntless]

welcome to the ens**itifcation era of windows.

To everything really.

 

[Chane]

Oh, your cloud operated game is having server trouble Microsoft, stop trying to sell the cloud as a gaming boon. It was never a good idea. I do honestly feel sorry for the people that purchased the game and want to play it, hopefully it works out for you soon.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Quality from MS is really pretty bad. They seem to prioritize progress over stability now. It started with Windows 10 and has seemingly only gotten worse. For example, I could not get MCC to work through a gamepass trial, yet it works perfectly from Steam. Halo Infinite is buggy ugliness—some textures look good, yet the trees are mush. These are titles that have been around for a while, yet this is still the state they are in.

They will likely struggle for a while and probably fix the major issues for the most part, but I’m betting it will never get fully resolved. Based on cloud-powered design decisions, it might just be a flawed result for the duration. If the product only functions well under ideal internet conditions, then it’s not exactly aimed for success for a large market.

 

[Space Lynx]

Maybe it's just me, but anyone that thought having a flight simulator game heavily based off of streaming it would be a good idea to buy it, well....you got what you paid for. A big cluster.

I'd like to think people would have started to learn by now to not support this kind of game play experience of requiring online connectivity for single player games, but I guess a lot of people are still pretty daft.

exactly, when I saw that Tom's Hardware article talking about 80 gigbytes downloaded in one hour just the streaming portion of the game... I was like yeah this is a terrible idea...

 

[Vayra86]

exactly, when I saw that Tom's Hardware article talking about 80 gigbytes downloaded in one hour just the streaming portion of the game... I was like yeah this is a terrible idea...

View attachment 372588

Remember the X360 that was initially going to require online??

Some things never change

 

[chrcoluk]

Guessing the final final final patch will be a combination of trimming down the assets and make a offline local repo to use.

£155 for the full version, ouch.

 

[Space Lynx]

Guessing the final final final patch will be a combination of trimming down the assets and make a offline local repo to use.

£155 for the full version, ouch.

i think most people will eventually play this on pc game pass so $10 a month really, thats how I played the 2020 sim, i would never buy these online only games

 

[Makaveli]

exactly, when I saw that Tom's Hardware article talking about 80 gigbytes downloaded in one hour just the streaming portion of the game... I was like yeah this is a terrible idea...

View attachment 372588

Yup if you have a data capped internet connection do not buy this game.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Remember the X360 that was initially going to require online??

Some things never change

I thought that was the XboxOne. The 360 introduced the online experience, but the first few models didn’t even have WiFi, just Ethernet.

 

[Space Lynx]

Yup if you have a data capped internet connection do not buy this game.

even with no data cap, major IP's will still artificially throttle you past a certain use case.

 

[docnorth]

Intel is behind all this, to drag Azure through the mud.

Seriously though, AI CPUs and accelerators my @ss, they couldn’t predict the load and strain on the servers…. A (functional) human brain would make a better prediction.

 

[bubbleawsome]

It doesnt make sense which then begs the question, why is it an option in the first place? Unless its meant to be used as an internet speed benchmark.

Unless you want to download over a petabyte of photogrammetry data you don’t have another option. Many people with high end flight sims will have a hardwired Ethernet connection, and the server issues will be worked out. It serves its purpose.

Guessing the final final final patch will be a combination of trimming down the assets and make a offline local repo to use.

£155 for the full version, ouch.

Considering MSFS2020 was online for its entire life I doubt it. This is already a proven successful model, they’re not scrapping it for some launch day issues.

 

[Psychoholic]

Been playing it on gamepass for PC.
Its not terrible but glad i didnt actually pay full price for it.

 

[Frick]

Yup if you have a data capped internet connection do not buy this game.

Which with the coming president means most of the US, which is pretty funny to me.

 

[Chaitanya]

24hr log-in time is a bit of joke.

Which with the coming president means most of the US, which is pretty funny to me.

And to top it off M$ is making Windows terminal which needs internet connection to work.