Microsoft just shared a lot of information about the recently released Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, including a look at the issues affecting the simulator and plans for the future.
Today’s livestream on Twitch was the first featuring the developers after the launch of the new sim, and as usual, we hear from Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann, Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch, and Executive Producer Martial Bossard.
Neumann started by admitting that the launch experience was “awful” and “deeply apologized” for it.
He then explained that the issues were actually not caused by the servers nor by the client, but by what was in the middle, the CDN (Content Delivery Network), which could not handle the number of requests.
Ultimately, increasing the CDN’s capacity was not enough, so Microsoft Ended up having to completely move infrastructure to a new CDN on Friday Morning (November 22), which worked great. Unfortunately, it took a few days to figure that out, which “really sucked.”
Below you can see charts showing the errors over time for the CDN distributing the packages and for the CDN distributing the world data. The third image shows the responses of the current CDN infrastructure. The 40X codes are errors, and they are a very small percentage.
Currently, stability is higher than 99.99%
The fourth image shows the current state of the servers, which are mostly green and blue (which means the responses provided to users aren’t errors). The new CDN is working and Microsoft is now happy with its performance.
We then hear about the upcoming third patch, which is “much much bigger” than the two we already received and should come on December 10 or December 12 depending on certification.
The first sim updates will come in Q1 2025 and Q2 2025 and Microsoft is planning one per quarter. There will be a beta to test each of them (starting in early 2025). That being said, packages like aircraft, the career, and the world can be updated server-side without needing a client-side update. They will be updated frequently.
Wloch then discussed the reliance on downloading data from the cloud. It mentioned that the team didn’t really have a choice on this, as the sim was simply getting too big. Going with the same solution MSFS 2020 had (streaming only world data) would have been impractical.
He explained that if we had to install the whole Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Standard Edition the way we did with MSFS 2020 (excluding the world data that was already provided via the cloud in the old simulator), it would have required a 1.4 Terabytes download. It would have taken users at least 25 hours at the speed the servers can provide the data.
In order to minimize downloads, Wloch recommended enabling a bigger rolling cache, for instance, 128 Gigabytes.
That being said, the developers are planning to let players manually install any package they want (aircraft, airports, and such) as an option. This will be similar to what is done with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, but it’ll be optional.
Players will also be able to completely deactivate a package so that it’s neither installed nor streamed. This option should come in a patch released in mid-December.
Of course, if you so wish, you’ll still be able to stream the packages as it’s doing now.
At the moment the rolling cache is about 80% efficient. That being said, there are some issues with MIP streaming of textures. This will be optimized so that the rolling cache will be as efficient as possible.
Wloch also addressed the LOD Issues. These may be due to the servers not being able to stream the high-detail versions, mostly over the first few days due to the CDN issues.
Other issues include low framerates while having set the Dynamic Settings options. When that system detects low frame rates, it will revert to lower LOD assets, reducing details. Disabling that option may improve the situation.
On Xbox, there is an additional problem, as it may run out of memory over time. This is compounded by the ability of the console to quick resume gameplay, which does not clean the memory. Quitting the simulator manually and restarting it may solve the issue, but the developers are investigating a solution to clean the memory up automatically.
Asobo is also planning to optimize memory utilization further and it’s one of the highest priorities for the team. This work is ongoing.
We then hear that the official marketplace won’t be open until early 2025 to give developers more time to test all of their add-ons.
A partial fix for airport and night lighting being too bright will be deployed in the third patch mentioned above. A more permanent solution with a baked night version of the ground textures worldwide is being investigated and might come in the long run.
Since some users are running out of VRAM (video RAM), the plan is to let people know via a popup when this happens, so that they can lower the graphics settings accordingly.
The problem with the number and size of trees is a combination of issues that are under investigation and need to be improved across the board.
Below you can see a list of the top 20 reported bugs and issues and their state.
Below you can also check out the top wishlist items from users.
The developers have committed to providing unencrypted aircraft to enable modding, but modded aircraft will only be available in free flight but not in the career to prevent cheating.
As expected, it’s impossible to completely remove the dependency from cloud streaming (as the whole world data is close to 3 petabytes and no one has enough storage for that), but as explained earlier, players will be able to optionally download packages like planes and airports that they want à la carte from the library.
We then heard from Matt Nischan from Working Title, who mentioned that providing a charts API for WASM is under investigation. Below you can find a list of future plans for the flight planner.
The nav data pipeline has been modernized considerably for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and the developers are currently working on gathering data for GLS (Global Navigation Satellite System-dependent alternative to Instrument Landing System). The addition of helicopter procedures is also under investigation.
Moving on to the plans for the future of the simulator, World Update 19 (Brazil, Guyana, French Guyana, and Suriname) has been delayed to January or February 2025.
The good news is that Microsoft has finally managed to sign an agreement with Embraer, and the developers want to do something with the company for the Brazil-focused World Update.
We also learn that in order to make up for the problems, four aircraft that would have been sold will instead be free for all users, the first is the Famous Flyer 11, Cessna 185F, the second is the Local Legend 20, CAP-4 Paulistinha. Two more remain to be announced.
Below you can check out the rich calendar of updates and content planned for 2025.
Neumann concluded the stream with a statement about the current situation and the future, which you can read in its entirety below.
“In the meantime, my perspective is, do we have too many bugs, yes, was the launch strange and really frustrating, yes, for all of us and it’s on us, as I said, but we do have a great platform here.
We have great teams. The Asobo team is doing awesome, the Working Title team is doing awesome work. I had a blast working with all the partners that made aircraft, lots of them are really good, and we’ll continue to do so and all we can say is we’re sorry about the launch. We will be better. We will fix this and make it the great sim platform that it can be and it will be.”
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is currently available for PC and Xbox Series X|S. if you want to see the visual difference against Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, you can enjoy our video and screenshot comparison.
You can also check out our in-depth analysis of how much data the simulator downloads from the cloud, clearing the air from some widespread misinformation that made the rounds over the past few weeks.
It’s worth reminding that Simulation Daily won’t publish a review of MSFS 2024, as we do not review games. We prefer to provide you with the tools to judge whether a game or a simulator is for you or not by yourself.
You can also watch our latest interview with Jorg Neumann, the previous interview with Neumann himself and Sebastian Wloch, another with Asobo CCO David Dedeine, and one featuring Chris Burnett of Working Title and Brandon Yaeger of Got Friends about their work on MSFS 2024.
