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[Draugoth]

via forbes
​

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has arrived on both PC and Xbox — but eager early players are struggling to actually play the game.


Long loading times and crashes (of the software, rather than the aircraft!) are causing frustration among players waiting to get their first glimpse of the revamped simulation.



Many players are complaining of long load times, with the game having to pull lots of data from the cloud before they can even reach the game’s start screen.

‘Loading Unusually Long’​

Loading screens appear to be getting stuck when the game reaches 97% loaded, with a small message reading “Loading unusually long”.


In my tests using an Xbox Series X in the U.K., the game has twice taken over 15 minutes to load before getting stuck at the 97% mark. On the one occasion I did manage to get the game to fully load, a test flight was glitchy and entering Career mode caused the game to crash back to the Xbox home screen.


Many other players are reporting similar problems on social media.


One player responding to the official Xbox account’s announcement that the game was live on X described the game as “Loading Screen Simulator 2024”.

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[Gaiff]

This wouldn’t happen with a PS5 SSD.

Cerny wins as usual.

 

[MDSLKTR]

Closing out with a ton of momentum?

 

[T4keD0wN]

This is why playing online games on day 1 is a disaster.

 

[XXL]

I was going to buy it to play it in VR.

Best to hold off for a bit. Lol.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

is this because of the cloud?

 

[Magic Carpet]

is this because of the cloud?

It's got to be, People trying to max everything out and the cloud choking.
Get those settings down to Series S levels and everything is hunky dory.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Closing out with a ton of momentum?

It’s crazy how Xbox and its shills find ways to humiliate themselves... and still lack the self-awareness to recognize their mistakes or learn from them

 

[Xdrive05]

is this because of the cloud?

Terrible planning by the tech team is causing their server cache to die under load. They only tested it for 200k users and in real life the server cache is not able to handle the real load.

 

[Danknugz]

kind of saw this coming, it was probably rushed out and is essentially still in beta

 

[playbignbox]

 

[Jaybe]

Should have been released in early access

 

[Jaybe]

Closing out with a ton of momentum?

 

[Pimpbaa]

Doesn’t this stream a hell of a lot more data than 2020? Probably why the servers are swamped.

 

[CamHostage]

This is a shame, the original was so impressive and developer Asobo is extremely gifted.

The tech jump here seemed too good to be true, but then again, the original seemed impossible until it happened. I wonder how this one went of the tracks, and how long it might take to right the issues....

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

This is why playing online games on day 1 is a disaster.

Any MP game should be considered a mandatory six months wait if one wants to play a semi-functional game. Well, most games really at this point.

 

[adamsapple]

The servers are being hammered cause everyone wants to get on. It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. Should have planned the launch better.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

The servers are being hammered cause everyone wants to get on. It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. Should have planned the launch better.

They did, its in game pass so they knew they could just patch it up later since most of the people playing it will be doing so in GP and not at full price.

This is the same situation as the new Forza.

 

[StereoVsn]

The servers are being hammered cause everyone wants to get on. It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. Should have planned the launch better.

This is also an SP game mostly, isn’t it?

That makes the server issue even more annoying. I was going to give it a shot in couple of weeks, so will see how things are then.

 

[adamsapple]

This is also an SP game mostly, isn’t it?

That makes the server issue even more annoying. I was going to give it a shot in couple of weeks, so will see how things are then.

It's still pulling data for most of it with only essential files being 'installed', so SP doesn't change that much.

 

[StereoVsn]

It's still pulling data for most of it with only essential files being 'installed', so SP doesn't change that much.

Which is annoying AF just like I said. At least with 2020 version it wasn’t as pronounced.

 

[lh032]

who doesnt have internet?

 

[Sooner]

is this because of the cloud?

Which one? There are tons in this game.

 

[diffusionx]

Xbros…

 

[nowhat]

The "sky is calling", as per the OT. Unfortunately, it's Spirit Airlines.

 

[poppabk]

Game is amazing once you get in but the servers are obviously getting hammered. Took me several hours to actually get in to the game. Didn't have any crashes on PC, in VR even, with everything cranked up way higher than I should.

 

[bender]

Tiny shades of SimCity.

 

[lockdown2222]

Game is amazing once you get in but the servers are obviously getting hammered. Took me several hours to actually get in to the game. Didn't have any crashes on PC, in VR even, with everything cranked up way higher than I should.

I can’t get in to save my life. I sit in the queue until the server errors message comes up. Install wasn’t an issue at all.

 

[poppabk]

They did, its in game pass so they knew they could just patch it up later since most of the people playing it will be doing so in GP and not at full price.

This is the same situation as the new Forza.

It's not really. Forza was lacking in content - MSFS2024 has so much content it's ridiculous. All of the discovery flights are in there, career mode, challenge mode, photography challenges, VR, and a ton of other stuff.
The game was solid from what I saw, MS just skimped on the servers, probably not wanting to invest to match a peak that they wont see again. They should have staggered the release, paid versions a week earlier than PC gamepass, then Xbox gamepass a week after that or something similar.

 

[kevboard]

This is also an SP game mostly, isn’t it?

That makes the server issue even more annoying. I was going to give it a shot in couple of weeks, so will see how things are then.

while it is mainly single player, the entire game is dependent on streaming world detail from the servers as installing the entire game would be essentially impossible (multiple terabytes of data)

in the last one you could download a flight path to play offline later, so I assume this is possible here too. it also had a low detail offline mode that only downloaded a super low quality version of the entire planet.

 

[GHG]

HeisenbergFX4 did say this one was coming in hot. Well here it is.

I appreciate the heads up, and I'm glad I didn't pre-order. I'll grab this early next year once they hopefully have all of this figured out and they actually start allowing people to download more (if not all) of the files locally.

 

[Gamer_By_Proxy]

They made the game a more authentic and accurate representation of air travel with the wait. I’m just upset about the lack of TSA staring at my junk while giving me radiation and then bomb swiping my bag cause I put all my electronics in one bag.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I vow to make sure it stays that way

 

[MacReady13]

Why are people playing this on steamxbox when they can play it on their mobile phone Xbox and play it for “free”? Either way, just another complete win for Microsoft and the Xbox brand. Long may they reign supreme in the gaming market!

 

[GHG]

I vow to make sure it stays that way

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It's not really. Forza was lacking in content - MSFS2024 has so much content it's ridiculous. All of the discovery flights are in there, career mode, challenge mode, photography challenges, VR, and a ton of other stuff.
The game was solid from what I saw, MS just skimped on the servers, probably not wanting to invest to match a peak that they wont see again. They should have staggered the release, paid versions a week earlier than PC gamepass, then Xbox gamepass a week after that or something similar.

I thought the whole point of the cloud was that businesses could quickly and dynamically allocate resources as needed depending how much demand there was for something

 

[Mattyp]

I thought the whole point of the cloud was that businesses could quickly and dynamically allocate resources as needed depending how much demand there was for something

That’s the entire point but once what should be enough hits the limit you can’t just unlock 50 idle servers instantly. Think the Netflix Jake Paul fight they should of been able to scale it’s not that easy as it’s happening but.

They’ll sort this out by the end of the week.

 

[Crayon]

That sounds hella broken. A lot of people are probably bummed but know to try again later. Any bothering to leave a review won't leave a nice one.

 

[Valedix]

Microsoft still stuck in 2000 with installation methods lmao.

 

[V1LÆM]

it’s only launch issues. It’ll sort itself out. Still gonna buy it later today.

 

[V1LÆM]

I vow to make sure it stays that way

What if it comes to PS5 like how many people were crying for?

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Wow, what a year for gaming!

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

The full game uses petabytes of data, an offline install is literally impossible, so it's entirely dependent on streaming data for users.
A game like this being highly anticipated was always going to have a disaster of a launch but should smooth out once servers stabilise.

 

[gtabro]

I expect STALKER 2 to be the same experience given the no-preload no-early reviews policies… Yet I’ll still try to run it today. Just a shame to see such a shitshow, I bought Flight Sim for the first time in 2020 and I loved it, the game worked just fine.

 

[acm2000]

It's being review bombed because the servers imploded and you can't even play the game.

Standard nerd warfare these days.

 

[nemiroff]

I expect STALKER 2 to be the same experience given the no-preload no-early reviews policies… Yet I’ll still try to run it today. Just a shame to see such a shitshow, I bought Flight Sim for the first time in 2020 and I loved it, the game worked just fine.

Not at launch. Servers were infamously hammered back then too, and the lucky ones to get through were decompressing files for hours.

But yeah 2024 will be great once things settles.

 

[FalconPunch]

The full game uses petabytes of data, an offline install is literally impossible, so it's entirely dependent on streaming data for users.
A game like this being highly anticipated was always going to have a disaster of a launch but should smooth out once servers stabilise.

It doesn't have to use that much data. The game could be 300gb with the main cities modeled and then the rest procedurally generated in a deterministic manner. Cloud streaming would stream the accurate world data and then when you're offline, you use procedurally generated terrain. Previous flight Sims weren't cloud dependent. Now you pay $200 for a game that is useless once they turn off the servers. Gamers are idiots.

 

[ap_puff]

Bruh, haven't people learned that day one on online games is always a clusterfuck?

 

[Skifi28]

This wouldn’t happen with a PS5 SSD.

Cerny wins as usual.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

I’ve payed 200 euros and all I’ve seen after 5 hours is an inactive online queue template.

MS can pound sand with their ‘momentum’.