2mo ago

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's launch has been marred by long load times, server issues and now it has overwhelmingly negative reviews

www.rockpapershotgun.com Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's launch has been marred by long load times, server issues and now it has overwhelmingly negative reviews

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has "overwhelmingly negative" Steam reviews due to launch issues, including endless load times caused by server issues.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's launch has been marred by long load times, server issues and now it has overwhelmingly negative reviews

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2mo ago

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's launch has been marred by long load times, server issues and now it has overwhelmingly negative reviews

www.rockpapershotgun.com /microsoft-flight-simulator-2024s-launch-has-been-marred-by-long-load-times-server-issues-and-now-it-has-overwhelmingly-negative-reviews

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76 comments

If anything this reflects badly upon Microsoft's cloud business. Dynamically spinning up enough servers shouldn't be an issue nowadays.
- It's a consistent issue for Microsoft releases. You would think a company that sells cloud services would be capable of having a smooth launch.
  
  There is a nearly zero percent chance that the game developers are also cloud experts. Having the same parent company means almost nothing, especially when you get to the size of places like Microsoft. The internal bureaucracy can actually make getting things accomplished properly worse. External contracts are usually pretty clear on what's provided for the payment. Internal processes are often much more blurry, if not completely muddy.
  
  One might argue this kind of thing is inevitable when your solution to everything is "the cloud".
  
  Reminds me of Amazon Games' disastrous MMO launches in Europe because they refused to add more server capacity for European players until they left in droves. For comparison the US servers had more than three times as much capacity at launch.
- According to Asobo, this issue was caused by a cache that was overloaded and constantly restarting. This was used in part of the authentication process, I believe when they check what content you have. This explains why people had missing content if they were lucky enough to get in. This was my experience - got in after a very long load time and then couldn’t really do anything due to missing content.
  This doesn’t seem like it’s a Microsoft cloud issue per se, it seems like Asobo had a single point of failure in the design that didn’t scale well. Today seems like the CDN limits are finally being reached, as it took a while to load up new areas. Getting into the game was no issue, though.
  
  Hey you! You with your logic and reasoning and reading the issue notes from developers. You aren't a real gamer, get out of here with that! We're here to dogpile on a new game here!
- the cloud services are probably fine, their willingness to actually use the resources for a game may not be.
  
  The asset streaming requirements are insane- they recommend having a 150mbps connection for a smooth experience with 50mbps as a minimum. Microsoft says they only planned for 250k players at launch, which is stupid considering FS 2020 had over a million sales at launch...
- I bet the beancounters don't like keeping excess capacity ready to go
  
  Scaling capacity up and down in real time should be Microsoft's core business now.
- I'd say it's more on how the developers setup their system to utilize (or not utilize) those dynamic capabilities.
  The game devs not taking advantage of that properly should be on them. Put the blame where it belongs.Don't let the devs off the hook just because you want to at least partially blame the MS cloud. Microsoft's systems CAN handle dynamic loads when setup properly, we see it all the time.

God I love having a future where my ability to play a fucking flight simulator depends on both internet access and server reliability.
Completely unnecessary to boot. Store a low res copy locally, offer the high res as regional packs. 0 reason to stream this data in.
- If you want a functional flight simulator that doesn’t require you constantly online , try out XPlane or Aerofly FS4. These games will work even if Microsoft puts out another steaming pile of shit in the next 4 years.
- Wouldn't that end up being hundreds of gigabytes per region file?
  
  For low res, no.
  Hi res, sure. Make it optional, or let players download the region they like. Or just the airports with much lower res landscapes, etc etc.
  Or just, let them have it all and make these choices. Memory is CHEAP nowadays. If you're a flight sim enthusiast, a few terabytes for the map data is the least expensive part of your setup by far.

Kinda wild that their previous flight simulator was met with near flawless reviews across the board, then the complete opposite for the immediate successor that probably shares 90% of the same code.
- I think the issue was precisely that. They didn't plan for the surge of users coming in on day one and whatever cloud hybrid system they have for this game got overwhelmed. We'll get to know about the game's actual quality a week from now I guess.
  
  They shouldn‘t have added it to GamePass on launch day but wait a few weeks or even months to stretch out the server load.
  I bet there are tons of causal and first time players that are already subscribed to gamepass that wanted to try out MSFS24 just because they have access to it. Now those people are pissed off even though they would have waited longer to get a better experience.
- Just like Windows versions.

Turns out that a massive Earth-scale game that requires streaming of gigabytes worth of data every play session for each user and has next to no local storage is a really awful idea.
X-plane 12 is looking better and better.
- This is one of the most dumbest Parts of this game, everyone's complaint of the last iteration was the massive download times, and the inefficiencies in the game causing it to lag even on high end systems. And their solution to that was to increase the specs that it's required to run the game and require a high speed internet on top of that? They more or less made it so anyone running satellite internet can't buy their game and anyone that lives in like 70% of the US that still has absolute dog shit internet speeds couldn't even imagine playing it. My mom still has a 5/5 mbit/s, that's the fastest anyone offers in her area, even downloading the previous game took ages there's no way in hell I'm going to recommend her buying this game

Lmao

game was too hard for my smoothie brain
also the AI voice actors are kinda rude and sound very bad by today's standards
the engine is off
you left the brakes on
_stop fucking with the egg yoke I swear to god I will 69ou
//
anyone have recommendations for flying games that were mae for dip shit likee lik m
- DCS. Easy peasy.
  
  DCS is amazing much higher fidelity sim but its at the complete opposite end of easy.
- anyone have recommendations for flying games that were mae for dip shit likee lik m
  Ace Combat?
  
  Ace combat is dope but I had to use my flight stick to make it playable.
- war thunder?
  
  Most renown as a cloud storage provider for classified military documents
- XPlane 12 and Aerofly FS4. They don’t need always on internet and the loading times are measured in seconds, not tens of minutes+
- GTA5
- VTOL is better, but you hafta have a good VR system :c
  
  Love VTOL vr but haven’t touched it since getting a nice civ aviation sim (not Microsoft).
  The virtual controls are very nice in VTOL but nothing beats an actual yoke and throttle and rudder pedals

I was surprised at the long load time initially and had a quick fly of an A10 warthog from a local small airfield.
This was on my Xbox Series S and it was a bit stuttery in places. It's clearly not meant for this console. This is for the pcs with big GPUs.

After the cluster fuck that was their previous release on top of the mass amount of actual DLC so I can't just buy the game and run with it, there was no way in hell I would buy this game.
The last flight Sim game that I had was flight simulator x, and honestly even that one if I hadn't got it as a gift I probably wouldn't have purchased because even that, the amount of DLC that it had was outrageous, I was lucky enough that I got it on disc so I'm not bombarded with them all the time, but I had looked at the steam page because I was curious about it and man was I in for a shock.
I wish I still had all the discs to my flight simulator 2004, it did basically the same exact thing that X did, and arguably was better than the previous iteration of flight simulator without all of the stupid paywalls. I just threw the disc in and it ran, didn't have to wait days for it to download, it didn't monopolize part of my drive and it didn't need a NASA supercomputer plus Internet to run

Works fine now that they fixed the problem, but that was an oops for sure.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

This is what happens when you have monopoly status. They're too big to fail.
- Sims are a captive market: all enthusiasts just buy it once, and there's limited number of enthusiasts. Companies either have finite money and resell the same sim again and again with a different coat of paint, or over promise and under deliver. Long gone are the days of a company that doesn't need to be profitable (like Microsoft with the early flight sims, made at a loss to showcase and sell their OS), and games are more expensive to make nowadays, not less.
  To break a captive market you either increase customers (not gonna happen, in fact simmers and interest in aviation is trending down compared with the 80s and 90s), or remove the market part altogether.
  Removing the market is the solution: be need an open source sim for the community by the community. Sims and libraries that can aglutinate all work done in academia, gaming, and different styles of sims under one umbrella, bringing a symbiotic work that is way better than the separate parts. We need to pull a Blender.
  We are in 2024. Sims suck. They barely are multi threaded. They need to reimplement all planes again and again, losing all info in what they falsely call themselves "a sim museum".
  We can do better.
  
  be need an open source sim for the community by the community.
  You mean something like FlightGear ?

I heard that you can't even fly a pterodactyl in it.
Pathetic

There's a new flight simulator? Shit, I still haven't played the one I bought like a year or two ago.

Let me guess,it doesn't work on Linux.
- You don't have to inject Linux into the conversation just because Microsoft is in the title
  
  Have you been on Lemmy?
  
  Nah am guessing, because when I see a game with negative reviews I always assume it doesn't work on Linux.
- It doesn't work on anything, apparently. That's kinda the point of the post.
  
  Ah I see.

76 comments