Update #6 (1.10.11.0) is now live!

[JRBarrett 3,080]

4 hours ago, DylanM said:

^ great analysis Jim. Out of curiosity, have you had to set up port forwarding for the Windows Xbox services? I noticed my NAT type is coming back "moderate" and should probably be open...

 

No port forwarding is in use. I don’t really pay much attention to the performance in the X-Box app network settings -  especially the Teredo setting, as Teredo has no bearing on MSFS at all. All the servers the sim connects to are usIng IPV4.

I don’t need Teredo in any case since I have end to end IPV6 connectivity in my internal network, router and ISP.

Edited November 12, 2020 by JRBarrett

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

On 11/10/2020 at 7:04 PM, jpe828 said:

 

Correct. The depth of the game or sim makes no difference to the update process, They have an issue in the delivery of the updates... it is not just me. Many people have had problems for awhile now. I had to google all sorts of work arounds and got it working. The Sim is great... no problems. But the updater needs to be updated!

The updater could be improved, but the depth of the game makes a difference. It means there are more small files and more files in general, which increases the likelihood an issue will force an error, which will require the recovery and threading to work better. There are also layers and layers of caching complications to this that do not exist in other game downloads, the cache is the most complicated in any game release ever, that is causing some of the issues. There aren't many games where you have to download so much content, or any games this large in general.

It's the domino effect in networking/file downloading at a huge scale, just like how Youtube isn't perfect because of the scale. Some do it better than others (hence Netflix is good usually), but also a huge portion of Netflix revenue would be lost if too many glitches, so they have to throw more money at the problem than a standard file updater might expect to budget.

Edited November 13, 2020 by SceneryFX

[EmaRacing 302]

On 11/12/2020 at 3:22 PM, JRBarrett said:

You should not get the banners if the bandwidth merely reduces. Those only appear if the connection to the scenery streaming server is completely lost. I often monitor all the TCP/IP connections MSFS makes while running using a utility program called CurrPorts. Typically the game is connected to between 4 and 7 discrete IP addresses (remote servers) while running. All the streams are encrypted, so I can’t see the actual contents with a packet monitor like WireShark, but one in particular is undoubtedly the scenery stream as that address has a continuing flow of incoming data which increases when the aircraft is in the air and moving. Whenever I get the red “internet connection lost” banner, it always occurs concurrent with a connection timeout to the specific TCP/IP address associated with the scenery stream. When that happens, I can see the connection being re-negotiated in real time in the monitor program, and as soon as it connects, the smaller black banner pops up to indicate that the connection has been reestablished.

I don’t think a mere slowdown in incoming packet rate is sufficient to generate the “connection lost” message. It appears to require a complete disconnect.

FWIW, two of the other IP addresses the sim connects to while running appear to be associated with LiveWeather, as both of those connections will be dropped if I turn LiveWeather off and use a preset instead. Both of these are completely different addresses than the IP address that supplies the scenery. One of those addresses resolves to Microsoft Azure, which, I suspect, contains the MeteoBlue forecast data. The other addresses resolves to an AmazonAWS server which I think may be the surface METAR data. The latter stream has a much lower packet rate than the Azure connection.

It's not the connection lost, it's the insufficient bandwidth warning, waay bigger than the other.

[EmaRacing 302]

On 11/11/2020 at 11:55 PM, Honnli said:

Yes that was the case for me that if the speed exceeds the limit set in the sim it would loop. But there could be other factors at play which causes the problem for people who didn't set an in-sim limit.

Regardless, and I know the the sim still has its fair share of bugs and issues (in fact I myself have encountered the reported large city multi-second stutter-freeze issue ever since the second patch (1.8.30) that can be frustrating and even rendering the sim un-flyable at times, causing me to fly less these days), but continuously calling them bugsobo (or any other insulting names for that matter) doesn't really help anyone. 😅

Bugsobo is not insulting, it's a funny nickname.

[icewater5 181]

lol  .  like the bunny that couldnt do much.

I think Asobo have excelled despite some problems, look forward to update 7

Edited November 14, 2020 by icewater5

[marsman2020 1,310]

19 hours ago, SceneryFX said:

The updater could be improved, but the depth of the game makes a difference. It means there are more small files and more files in general, which increases the likelihood an issue will force an error, which will require the recovery and threading to work better. There are also layers and layers of caching complications to this that do not exist in other game downloads, the cache is the most complicated in any game release ever, that is causing some of the issues. There aren't many games where you have to download so much content, or any games this large in general.

It's the domino effect in networking/file downloading at a huge scale, just like how Youtube isn't perfect because of the scale. Some do it better than others (hence Netflix is good usually), but also a huge portion of Netflix revenue would be lost if too many glitches, so they have to throw more money at the problem than a standard file updater might expect to budget.

Christ, the level of contortion people are willing to twist themselves into to make excuses for Asobo is just ridiculous.

The updater is broken and causes constant problems for 100s of people every time a new patch comes out. Stuck downloads, downloading 1000x the patch size, it's a freaking bloodbath with every update.

There is no 'domino effect of caching' or any BS like that.  All of the caching is in the backend streaming content, not the installed game on someones PC or the servers hosting the content that is installed on someones PC.  Except for the community folder and a very small number of settings files (menu options and controller settings), all that needs to happen is that the updater makes sure that the files on my PC match the current released files.  When there is a patch, the current released files increment (all at once) and any deltas need to get downloaded.  This is not rocket science, Steam has been doing it for games since Half Life 2 came out 16 years ago.  I have several other games that are 40GB in size, and there's no reason that something only 3x larger should break the paradigm under which games are updated.  Several upcoming PS5 titles are in the 66-105GB range.

If Git can clone a remote repository with the entire Linux kernel - 1000s upon 1000s of tiny files - onto my PC and keep it up to date tracking the remote repository, there is no excuse for the terrible experience people are having with this updater.

Stop making excuses for Asobo's inability to code.

Even worse is the stupid work-arounds they post on the official forums like "Run it in administrator mode" or whatever, when every other large game updater that I have works just fine without such work-arounds.

Edited November 14, 2020 by marsman2020

[icewater5 181]

2 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

 

The updater is broken and causes constant problems for 100s of people every time a new patch comes out. Stuck downloads, downloading 1000x the patch size, it's a freaking bloodbath with every update.

 

 

 

Ive seen numbers on a lot of threads and reporting percentages not numbers is more useful. Not trying to make excuses for Asobo at all, but the game/sim has gone over a million.  Even iff thousands are reporting problems that could still be a relative minority.

Edited November 14, 2020 by icewater5

[JRBarrett 3,080]

3 hours ago, EmaRacing said:

It's not the connection lost, it's the insufficient bandwidth warning, waay bigger than the other.

I’ve had the connection lost message occasionally but have never seen an insufficient bandwidth banner. Wasn’t even aware that was a possible error message.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

3 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

Christ, the level of contortion people are willing to twist themselves into to make excuses for Asobo is just ridiculous.

The updater is broken and causes constant problems for 100s of people every time a new patch comes out. Stuck downloads, downloading 1000x the patch size, it's a freaking bloodbath with every update.

There is no 'domino effect of caching' or any BS like that.  All of the caching is in the backend streaming content, not the installed game on someones PC or the servers hosting the content that is installed on someones PC.

Sounds like a lot of jumping to conclusions there, and there are some issues with the updates interacting with the cache as has been noted hundreds of times in the official forums. There are also bugs in the cache where you can turn it off and it remains on even though you don't know it, and then the updater tries to reset the setting and it causes a mess. Anyhow don't feel like going into it all, I suggest if your having issues to try to isolate it from other posters in the official forums that were also having issues.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/need-an-explanation-about-rolling-cache-and-manual-cache/142641/39

I am not excusing their poor design decisions or some of the bugs they left in there, but it is what it is. I have not had that many more issues with this game than any other. I've had Steam freeze up or cause a game to need to be reinstalled at least a couple times, its not unheard of. I've never had any issues with their updater, other than it getting stuck and I have to restart it, but that's minor, and only had to restart it one time out of the last 4-5 updates or so.

There are in fact a lot more tiny files than other games that I've seen, I am not sure what game sizes you are referencing, but my install with multiple airports is well over 250GB.

Edited November 14, 2020 by SceneryFX

[EmaRacing 302]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:51 AM, JRBarrett said:

I’ve had the connection lost message occasionally but have never seen an insufficient bandwidth banner. Wasn’t even aware that was a possible error message.

It doesn't happen to me anymore, I reenabled the cache and it sems to cause much smaller download peaks, also I now make sure that I'm connected to a 60Mbps+ cellphone tower before starting the game. (mountain area internet life hacks)