Yawn 🥱 more empty concerns about new technology. Read a recent article about cloud computing and energy usage:

https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/28/cloud-computing-more-energy-efficient-than-thought/

Actually datacenters and servers are sort of invented to do things more efficient. Try to imagine that you would use MSFS2020 localy on your local computer. That would require probably a system with roughly 1000 hard disks for each user. Each user has to buy those harddisk and you would probably need to buy the game as a truck loaded with Blu- Rays. If the game is 5 PettaByte then that is 100,000 Blu-Rays of 50 GByte. If it takes only a half hour to install a Blu-Ray then that would take roughly 6 years to just install the sim. So during that 6 years your system would spin 1000 harddisk for each user in the world. That would cost an insane ammount of energy and then you did not fly a single minute. 

In short, it simply would not work to install it locally. You might argue that you would not buy then MSFS2020 but you would still use e.g. X-Plane. Lets just say that X-Plane would require a dedicated hard disk to install the game and all of it add-ons. If you have 100,000 users then that would still be 100,000 extra harddisks. That is a lot more then Azure would allocate.

Only if you would not use anything that requires energy, only then it would have a lower carbon footprint. But perhaps then you start creating babies and if there is anything that requires on the long run a lot of energy Then it is producing offspring.  

But if we use all the methane produced by cows,  then no worries about renewable energy. 

Or we take turns on the hamster wheel to power the servers. 

Yeah, I'm sarcastic, I've been told by many that I would make a great Brit, but when the day comes as as viable replacement,  I'll be first in line to run on the hamster wheel. 

2 hours ago, Casualcas said:

But if we use all the methane produced by cows,  then no worries about renewable energy. 

I think you are onto something.  Here is a discussion on using fart power - https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21271/personal-fart-power-is-it-viable

40 years ago people never consumed power 24/7 as they do now, country's now trade carbon emissions it`s all smoke and mirrors to keep the climate activist happy and CO2 is an essential building block of life, AIR ,WATER ,CARBON (CO2). Remove one of them and life as we know it ends.    

That's fantastic,  and probably more than true. But we need fewer people stating the problem, and more working on the solution.

22 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

Yeah, and perhaps by the time MSFS 2020 is released, it may be something to pass the time while everyone is self-quarantined in place, and the only commercial aircraft flying will be on flight sims😒  

I'd be unemployed it that was the case.😭

19 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Yawn 🥱 more empty concerns about new technology. Read a recent article about cloud computing and energy usage:

https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/28/cloud-computing-more-energy-efficient-than-thought/

End of thread.

5 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

40 years ago people never consumed power 24/7 as they do now, country's now trade carbon emissions it`s all smoke and mirrors to keep the climate activist happy and CO2 is an essential building block of life, AIR ,WATER ,CARBON (CO2). Remove one of them and life as we know it ends.    

They do exactly the same with waste, but this seems to coming to an end.

3 minutes ago, eaim said:

They do exactly the same with waste, but this seems to coming to an end.

UNs own easements the worlds population will increases by 1.5 billion before 2030 you will need solar farms covering the planet but growing food may be more important.  

6 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

UNs own easements the worlds population will increases by 1.5 billion before 2030 you will need solar farms covering the planet but growing food may be more important.  

We went in roughly 200 years from a world population of 1 billion people to a world population of 8 billion people. A lot of countries committed to emitting less CO2 but nobody committed to birth control. Despite all the efforts you see that in western countries the emission is getting lower but world wide the emission of CO2 is getting higher. It will cost me a huge amount of money this energy transition but there is no result at all. 

11 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

40 years ago people never consumed power 24/7 as they do now,

The people from 40 years ago is why we have problems.  They knew about global warming but chose to ignore it.  

52 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

The people from 40 years ago is why we have problems.  They knew about global warming but chose to ignore it.  

I'm not really sure if they really appreciated the threat from climate change, in fact when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, a lot of things were recycled, like glass bottles, while not much plastic was used. When shopping you were given paper bags instead plastic, but things like coal power was widely used.

On 3/6/2020 at 2:07 PM, Krakin said:

We keep making a big deal out of this streaming thing for all the wrong reasons..

There are so many ways you can reduce CO2. You shouldn't be concerned about MSFS. 😄

I mean, no one complains about the servers hosting Netflix or Youtube HD content. 😉

You wanna contribute to the climate? Don't take the plane, use MSFS! 😄

@eaim  My comment was just hyperbole on the same level as the comment I replied to.   

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I have no idea what any of this has to do with MSFS.  Everything has servers these days, or uses the internet, so this is not unique to MSFS.  Seems this post should be in a different section of the forum.