May 14th, 2020 - Development Update

[Scottoest 1,561]

19 hours ago, anden145 said:

Don't 'feed' him, guys... he wants this to be a problem for him. You won't change his mind, no matter how many logical and rational arguments, you throw his way...

Let's just leave him at that belief.

This strikes me as needlessly unkind.  I'm sure for some people their internet connection may well be a real consideration or roadblock to using MSFS, and not everyone lives in a well-connected area for internet.  I don't think it really behooves Asobo or Microsoft to cater to such people, but it remains a real issue for a minority who live in remote areas.

I have no reason or prior knowledge leading me to believe KenG is being disingenuous in his concerns here either.

[LHookins 3,103]

42 minutes ago, Anthracite said:

If it was me who had data caps, I would pick a different hobby. I've been gaming online since 56k, I've never reached a data cap or broken any fair use on bandwidth and I've been pretty prolific with my downloads. Where you living that its a problem if you don't mind me asking?

I was gaming online with a 2400 baud modem in the 80's. 🙂 

I'm about 80 miles northeast of Dallas. I have satellite Internet with 12 MBps and a 25 gig monthly cap. My family uses all of that every month.  I can buy additional bandwidth for $10 per gig.

Edit to add:  I never had a cap until I had satellite.

A few weeks ago a new company built a tower close to my house, so it may not be a problem.  I'll find out in a few days how much it will cost to make it work.  They have unlimited bandwidth and up to 100 MBps.

Not everyone has a choice on service provider.  This is not speculation, it is not hypothetical, and it's not bashing MSFS.  This is a real problem that some of us face.

Thanks for the offer, btw. 😄 I hope everyone with bandwidth problems can find someone like you.

Hook

Edited May 17, 2020 by LHookins

[Anthracite 131]

19 minutes ago, LHookins said:

I was gaming online with a 2400 baud modem in the 80's. 🙂 

I'm about 80 miles northeast of Dallas. I have satellite Internet with 12 MBps and a 25 gig monthly cap. My family uses all of that every month.  I can buy additional bandwidth for $10 per gig.

Edit to add:  I never had a cap until I had satellite.

A few weeks ago a new company built a tower close to my house, so it may not be a problem.  I'll find out in a few days how much it will cost to make it work.  They have unlimited bandwidth and up to 100 MBps.

Not everyone has a choice on service provider.  This is not speculation, it is not hypothetical, and it's not bashing MSFS.  This is a real problem that some of us face.

Thanks for the offer, btw. 😄 I hope everyone with bandwidth problems can find someone like you.

Hook

word not allowed that sucks. It’s hard to imagine that war torn and broken countries have better internet access and usage policies than some places in America. I thought perhaps you might say Sudan or the Congo. In the U.K. we’ve been complaining for years because there is better internet access available in the poorest nations in the EU. Better and faster. We seem to have it pretty easy compared to you guys. 

 

Well I hope you gain access to a better provider. Hopefully because MS is an American company they will recognise the issue for some at home and offer physical media variants. Really though I’d rather the real problem be nipped in the bud - predatory data limits. There’s no reasonable excuse for a data cap, except perhaps on mobile and even then it’s debatable. Blatant money grab. Good luck!

[LHookins 3,103]

1 hour ago, Anthracite said:

There’s no reasonable excuse for a data cap,

The pipes on a satellite aren't that big and there are a lot of people using them.  They don't really have a choice but to put limits up. 

For years there was nothing here.  Originally I was on 56k, then a fixed wireless company came in and it was my first broadband, but the parent cable TV company went bankrupt.  Satellite was available by then from a company with a somewhat fly-by-night reputation which was eventually bought by professionals, and that's what I'm currently using.  The dial-up ISP offered wireless but didn't have line of sight.  DSL was at least 5 miles away.  A year ago a mom-and-pop shop set up a wireless and coverage was iffy, and a few weeks ago a large company built a tower 1/4 mile from my house.  I am hopeful.

I spent a lot of time analyzing traffic on that first satellite company, and it appeared that even one person doing torrents affected everyone on the channel (causing a typical 20% packet loss), and three people would bring the system to its knees.  Not to mention their protocols caused 1300 ms ping times.  Currently getting 650 ms, a problem when everything is https handshaking.  Something about that pesky speed of light thingy.

Torrenters didn't last long with draconian bandwidth enforcement which included a phantom usage spike "bug" which I suspect was intentional.

The current company has been absolutely great, but satellite is the broadband of last resort.

Hook

[goates 576]

18 minutes ago, LHookins said:

The current company has been absolutely great, but satellite is the broadband of last resort.

Hopefully Starlink can shake things up and help people in more remote locations like yourself.

[JRBarrett 3,072]

51 minutes ago, LHookins said:

The pipes on a satellite aren't that big and there are a lot of people using them.  They don't really have a choice but to put limits up. 

For years there was nothing here.  Originally I was on 56k, then a fixed wireless company came in and it was my first broadband, but the parent cable TV company went bankrupt.  Satellite was available by then from a company with a somewhat fly-by-night reputation which was eventually bought by professionals, and that's what I'm currently using.  The dial-up ISP offered wireless but didn't have line of sight.  DSL was at least 5 miles away.  A year ago a mom-and-pop shop set up a wireless and coverage was iffy, and a few weeks ago a large company built a tower 1/4 mile from my house.  I am hopeful.

I spent a lot of time analyzing traffic on that first satellite company, and it appeared that even one person doing torrents affected everyone on the channel (causing a typical 20% packet loss), and three people would bring the system to its knees.  Not to mention their protocols caused 1300 ms ping times.  Currently getting 650 ms, a problem when everything is https handshaking.  Something about that pesky speed of light thingy.

Torrenters didn't last long with draconian bandwidth enforcement which included a phantom usage spike "bug" which I suspect was intentional.

The current company has been absolutely great, but satellite is the broadband of last resort.

Hook

Broadband is often a problem in rural areas. DSL is sometimes available, but speeds can be pretty slow. I have 100MB cable broadband at my home, but just 10 miles south of here, across the border in northern PA there is no cable available in many places.

A co-worker who lives there had only DSL or SATCOM internet as options. He tried DSL, but max bandwidth was often less than 1 MB, so he went with the satellite service, which is quite a bit faster, but with a monthly data cap.

Things will be much better for him soon however. Fiber internet is coming to his area, not supplied by a cable company or telco, but by the rural cooperative that supplies his electric power. The co-op is running fiber along all their power line poles, and all their electric customers will soon have access to 1000 MB internet with no caps!

[anden145 2,285]

 

9 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

KenG is respected guy...  If a person were only using flightsim they may not have noticed how big AAA titles are these days.   They are huge downloads .  

There is an offline version too.  No idea on the file size

Come on! I have in no way said anything which were disrespectful. I merely suggested, that since he obviously dismissed every possible (and reasonable) argument against him, maybe - just maybe - just let him stay in his belief and move on?

You just gotta love the 'double-standards', which AVSIM has moved towards...

Oh, well... 

[Dominique_K 10,149]

On 5/16/2020 at 5:31 PM, canadiantree said:

I'm surprised size is even an issue given hard drive sizes & fiber optic internet becoming more & more common, unless you live in a country with low bandwith and/or data caps, if so then I truly feel sorry for you.

I live in a « country with low bandwidth ». It is called France, a village off the Côte d’Azur 😏 and I would certainly welcome a physical media to carry the new sim as it will take days to download FS20 with my present internet access both ADSL and 4g. 

If not, and I do not hold my breath knowing that there is little chance that the the sim comes on a SSD sold by the MS shop, I hope that the MS delivery will allow to download the sim on one computer to install and register it on another computer. And that the cache will allow pre-flight manual downloads .
 

 

[Darcanlos 89]

Guess I'm lucky with symmetric 600Mbps here in Spain, and cheap too... Could also easily go to 1000 for just 10€ more per month, but it seems a bit overkill and unnecessary at the moment.

We do have awesome coverage down here in general. Internet is quite advanced when compared to other countries in Europe, even Germany.

[threexgreen 3,139]

12 hours ago, Anthracite said:

word not allowed that sucks. It’s hard to imagine that war torn and broken countries have better internet access and usage policies than some places in America. I thought perhaps you might say Sudan or the Congo. In the U.K. we’ve been complaining for years because there is better internet access available in the poorest nations in the EU. Better and faster. We seem to have it pretty easy compared to you guys.

10 hours ago, goates said:

Hopefully Starlink can shake things up and help people in more remote locations like yourself.

I live in a city of 600.000+ and all I have is 5.6 Mbps DSL with disruptions every now and then. And that's not just me but entire neighborhoods around my place with tens of thousands of people who get 6 Mbps at best. This is just some 10-15 km outside of the city center in a big urban agglomeration with several large cities. Basically, many who live outside of the inner city are stuck in 2005-ish in terms of internet infrastructure and for around 15 years nothing has happened. First world country my @**...

The option to use manual caching to download areas and store them on an SSD is the best news about MSFS for me.

 

[KenG 492]

When I purchased and downloaded Office 2019 I selected the backup USB ($19.95.) Looking at the USB is it fairly small 8GB and contains 3GB of files. The same 3GB coming over my 60Mbps peak (Super Speed according to my ISP) connection took over 6 hours. So when I state a 116GB download is unsustainable from Microsoft's repositories that is what I am basing it off of. 

I am not a console gamer and I have never downloaded anything approaching 150GB. I am a typical shared connection with 330 of my neighbors with one and only one choice for an ISP. I don't live in a major urban complex and thus do not have access to these blinding fast speeds that most seem to have and thus dismiss concerns for download times.  

Thus I will not participate in an ALPHA program that will tie up my internet connect for a day or longer. Hearing rumors that some ALPHA testers have to download this massive file with each patch basically puts the entire program unattainable from my standpoint. Yes on release day I would happily pay an extra 39.95 (the average price for a 256GB drive + shipping) for a physical thumb drive. 

It is just unfathomable that some would find such a conversation to be offensive. I understand that this is not a problem everyone faces, but to call this conversation a double standard lacks empathy.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

30 minutes ago, KenG said:

The same 3GB coming over my 60Mbps peak (Super Speed according to my ISP) connection took over 6 hours.

That doesn't sound right. If a 3GB download takes more than 6 hours, it means your average connection speed is slightly faster than 1Mbps. I would check with the ISP if I were you.

[LHookins 3,103]

8 hours ago, anden145 said:

I have in no way said anything which were disrespectful.

You said he wants this to be a problem for him, referring to his limited bandwidth.  Trust me, NO ONE *wants* limited bandwidth.  Those who have it don't have other options.

Hook

[LHookins 3,103]

5 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

That doesn't sound right. If a 3GB download takes more than 6 hours, it means your average connection speed is slightly faster than 1Mbps. I would check with the ISP if I were you.

He also said he's on a shared connection with 330 people sharing that bandwidth.  All 330 share that 60 Mbps speed.

He may have had better performance doing the download in the middle of the night rather than peak usage time, typically 1700 to 2300.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Hook

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

22 minutes ago, LHookins said:

He also said he's on a shared connection with 330 people sharing that bandwidth.  All 330 share that 60 Mbps speed.

Oh. I haven't heard of such a case before. Are we sure that he isn't talking about the neighbourhood sharing a cabinet (which is usually the case with a DSL infrastructure)?