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

[[XC] Oj101]

It's crazy that 15 years ago the world thought South Arica was backwards as we had capped DSL, generally in the 3GB to 10GB range. Above that, you could top up at a certain price per GB. Reading an article about potential throttling above 1TB is weird, because now we have truly uncapped internet, with people using as much as an average of 116TB per month.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/fibre/458413-the-693tb-man-south-africas-biggest-bandwidth-hog.html

Another article shows a single person averaging around 127TB per month for nearly a year:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/fibre/519029-the-1-4-petabyte-man-south-africas-biggest-data-hogs.html

Our FNOs actually use this as a marketing gimmick to show what their networks are capable of, rather than punishing (ab)users.

 

[LittleBro]

Seeing 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.

 

[venturi]

It would be better to be able to select and chose regional maps or areas. If one want to run 100% off line

 

[Wirko]

It 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.

 

[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.

 

[Makaveli]

Most of the western world cannot even get 100Mbps internet?

most?

That 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?

 

[LittleBro]

So 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.

 

[Uns1gn3d_C0d3]

Did 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.

 

[z1tu]

Did 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

 

[Wirko]

That cache is guaranteed to be buffered on disk, so the SSD wear argument is valid.

Sure, a four-hour low flight from Rome to Paris will eat 300 GB of your SSD, which amounts to 4 €/$ cents, which equals 0.04 litres of kerosene.

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.

MSFS can probably put all the RAM you have to good use anyway.

Better have option for setting cache for this game to an entirely separate drive for swapping purposes.

Take an advice from the Cessna maintenance manual and check the TBW in SMART attributes every 100 hours of flying. Be alarmed if and when necessary, but not earlier.

 

[cvaldes]

Would use less bandwidth to stream the game from a cloud gaming service than to actually render locally. Absolutely nuts.

Absolutely.

This title is an ideal candidate for online streaming from GeForce NOW, etc. Just send the video framebuffer over the Internet, let Nvidia eat up their own bandwidth for the game datafeed. This game isn't an ultra twitchy FPS so moaning about input lag is mostly irrelevant for this particular title.

Many people here said that online game streaming was inferior to local game rendering. Well, here is your argument against that.

 

[HOkay]

Absolutely.

This title is an ideal candidate for online streaming from GeForce NOW, etc. Just send the video framebuffer over the Internet, let Nvidia eat up their own bandwidth for the game datafeed. This game isn't an ultra twitchy FPS so moaning about input lag is mostly irrelevant for this particular title.

Many people here said that online game streaming was inferior to local game rendering. Well, here is your argument against that.

My immediate thought was something similar, but I went down the route of what about a model where the surface of the world was a steamed video feed & everything else was still locally rendered? I can't tell if that's genius or the dumbest thought I've had at least today I think the latter is more likely, since if you're video streaming the backdrop, why not video stream the whole game.

 

[mechtech]

I only have a 250/30 connection MS geeeeeezzzz.............

 

[Caring1]

most?


So better to load this on a SATA SSD then a Pcie drive?

Better to load it on a large spinning disk or two even, in raid.

 

[Makaveli]

Better to load it on a large spinning disk or two even, in raid.

I haven't had any spinning disk in my desktop in years that was all moved to a NAS!

And who loads games on a HDD in 2024 unless you were joking

 

[Caring1]

I haven't had any spinning disk in my desktop in years that was all moved to a NAS!

And who loads games on a HDD in 2024 unless you were joking

Server grade disks will last a lot longer with intensive writes

 

[Zareek]

funny how many from US complain about game/maker, instead of net/mobile providers that charge you 2-10 times that of other 1st world countries.

At the risk of being a little off-topic. You are right, but you know, CAPITALISM above all else. Too many people here think the free market and competition will solve all its own problems. Speaking otherwise is communism to them. Despite the fact that most internet providers have monopolies on their given markets. I could go on and on, because it really pisses me off!

180Mbits/s is just nuts! Even 50Mbits/s is steep, that's enough to stream 8k60!

 

[colossusrageblack]

How much space would be required to just have all of the maps stored locally?

Edit: According to Copilot, it is 2.5 petabytes (2500 terabytes) of storage. I guess I won't be doing that.

 

[Draconis]

It's crazy that 15 years ago the world thought South Arica was backwards as we had capped DSL, generally in the 3GB to 10GB range. Above that, you could top up at a certain price per GB. Reading an article about potential throttling above 1TB is weird, because now we have truly uncapped internet, with people using as much as an average of 116TB per month.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/fibre/458413-the-693tb-man-south-africas-biggest-bandwidth-hog.html

Another article shows a single person averaging around 127TB per month for nearly a year:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/fibre/519029-the-1-4-petabyte-man-south-africas-biggest-data-hogs.html

Our FNOs actually use this as a marketing gimmick to show what their networks are capable of, rather than punishing (ab)users.

Too many people here think the free market and competition will solve all its own problems. Speaking otherwise is communism to them. Despite the fact that most internet providers have monopolies on their given markets.

In South Africa there are multiple fibre providers that offer service from multiple ISP's, there are very few providers that offer both services. The climate is currently fortunately very good and I feel for you with the lack of competition in the US. I have 250Mbit/s up/down at home for roughly $35, totally uncapped and unshaped. Problem is we had this many years ago in the dial up/DSL era and the market consolidated into a few large players and everything stagnated and we had the exact same situation as the US. It was only when FTTH took off that we got a competitive landscape again but I fear the consolidation down the line is inevitable.

 

[Zareek]

In South Africa there are multiple fibre providers that offer service from multiple ISP's, there are very few providers that offer both services. The climate is currently fortunately very good and I feel for you with the lack of competition in the US. I have 250Mbit/s up/down at home for roughly $35, totally uncapped and unshaped. Problem is we had this many years ago in the dial up/DSL era and the market consolidated into a few large players and everything stagnated and we had the exact same situation as the US. It was only when FTTH took off that we got a competitive landscape again but I fear the consolidation down the line is inevitable.

Fortunately, my home Internet provider doesn't have any data caps, but I believe that is in large part due to my state threatening to sue the ISP (Comcast/Xfinity) who was rolling them out in other states. Data caps are just another excuse to pad already GIANT profits. They just charge you a penalty fee for going over, or you can pay extra to not have a cap. Corporate greed at it's finest!

 

[Vincero]

Nobody gonna bring up the elephant in the room...???

What's the lifespan of this game gonna actually be?

How long will MS actually keep servers active for this with that massive amount of data streaming. Even if they made the game $100, it's quite conceivable that the data streaming costs from the various DCs and network peering around the world will actually eat in to that over time, quite substantially - even if hosted primarily from MS Azure it's still not 'free' for MS to run.

MS already indicated FS 2020 may have a limited lifespan after 2024 is released...

 

[Makaveli]

Server grade disks will last a lot longer with intensive writes

True but I don't run server grade task at home on my desktop. So there is no need to server grade HDD in my desktop not to mention the noise that will bring. Only use Sata SSD and M2 drives in my build. And I thought we were talking about a game

 

[Vincero]

How much space would be required to just have all of the maps stored locally?

Edit: According to Copilot, it is 2.5 petabytes (2500 terabytes) of storage. I guess I won't be doing that.

One has to imagine that a large amount of this map data could be reduced in level of detail with limited impact, and in some cases not included altogether - definitely some direct texture/image compression would be beneficial if not already applied to that.
If you're flying over a mountainous jungle, does it really need to have accurate photographic map quality - I'd take an accurate relief/terrain map with some procedurally generated trees/flora - it's not like there will be hundreds of specific landmarks in a small space.
I think the devs went a little too 'all-in' on the whole imagery approach.

 

[AsRock]

It's simple. If you have a data cap, don't buy this game. If you don't have a data cap, still don't buy this game, because at 81 gigabytes usage per hour, your ISP will eventually artificially throttle you, in America anyway. Other countries may have better laws for this, I don't know.

Well i would not want it to keep downing the same shit all the time too.

I pass anyways the planes have no guns hahahaha. Is kinda sad they pushing this kinda shit.

 

[Waldorf]

Nobody gonna bring up the elephant in the room...???

What's the lifespan of this game gonna actually be?

How long will MS actually keep servers active for this with that massive amount of data streaming. Even if they made the game $100, it's quite conceivable that the data streaming costs from the various DCs and network peering around the world will actually eat in to that over time, quite substantially - even if hosted primarily from MS Azure it's still not 'free' for MS to run.

MS already indicated FS 2020 may have a limited lifespan after 2024 is released...

its not always about making profit, see Bugatti Veyro , where VW was losing ~3M on every car they sold.

How much space would be required to just have all of the maps stored locally?

Edit: According to Copilot, it is 2.5 petabytes (2500 terabytes) of storage. I guess I won't be doing that.

cant talk about game making/engines, but maybe have maps in HD/FHD on the drive, and only get the additional stuff dl/streamed, depending on what settings ppl use for IQ.