I think this was touched upon in the Logbook thread but it appears to be a spreading problem, hence a dedicated thread.

I have 960 hours of logged flying time (plus whatever hasn't been recorded by the sim) and am well on my way to that magic 1000 miles, but now I have received the dreaded message: 

Quote

Warning. Your Packages are out of Date. In order to get the necessary updates and go online, you will be returned to the sign-in screen. Do you wish to continue?  Yes/No

I had been out of the room and returned to see the message. Shortly before that, I'd noticed that the VFR map showed me over land but without my plane visible. That happens if you're too far north or south on the globe but FSMapTool showed I was actually close to the south cost of Iceland, definitely still in VFR map territory. In fact, it still shows me in that same place, speed and altitude (I was using AP and AT). So it seems the server is still sending the info, just that it hasn't updated.🤔

People reporting on the official forum thread say that following the instructions (i.e. "Yes") is liable to result in not only a loss of settings but zeroing of the Logbook. So close to 1000 hours, that's the last thing I want to happen. The temptation therefore is to choose "No" and see what happens. Others have cleared the warning by rebooting, but I don't know if they selected Yes or No first or did a hard reboot. The hard reboot would likely lose the 21 hour flight I'm in the middle of, but that would be preferable to the alternative. I know that the Logbook has no value other than the sense of achievement and possible bragging rights for some, but when you're that close to 1000 hours...🤬

Thoughts and experiences?

I tried both yes, and no options. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference, so I suspect you are going to be kissing your MSFS logbook goodbye.

8 minutes ago, Chock said:

I suspect you are going to be kissing your MSFS logbook goodbye.

"Word oddly allowed". If I had at least got to 1000 hours, I could have made a screenshot for posterity. I notice achievements may or may not be similarly affected. Maybe, if I'm not totally out of luck, it may at least still register the 1000 hours achievement, but I don't hold out much hope...

Edited April 8, 20215 yr by 109Sqn
Edited word I assumed would be censored!

If you receive a "packages out of date" error, and are then unable to connect to online services (multiplayer, live weather, marketplace) then the following fix is working for some people: Step 1: Go to Settings > General > Data and turn off Online Functionality, then save, then on, then save. Then, rather than exiting the options menu, instead close MSFS by pressing Alt+F4 and restart the sim. Step 2: If this doesn't fix the issue, reset the rolling cache (go to Settings > General > Data and delete rolling cache, then you need to initialise it again by switching it back on on the same page, and wait while it initialises) and repeat step 1 again.

Edited April 8, 20215 yr by fogboundturtle

@fogboundturtle Thanks. I assume that's after pressing "Yes"  on the Warning screen? In other words, if pressing "Yes" doesn't solve the issue, then I follow the above?

I already had cache disabled after World Update 3.

I'm going to wait for a few more replies (hopefully) to get a bigger picture of the issue and other people's experiences. Meanwhile, the sim is still sitting on the Warning screen. Just as well I had lowered my graphics settings to the minimums to take the strain off the GPU and CPU whilst it was running unattended with the monitor off before this occurred.

Edited April 8, 20215 yr by 109Sqn

Everything seems to work again after I download the new updates in content manager, are those the missing packages?

1 hour ago, Chock said:

I tried both yes, and no options. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference, so I suspect you are going to be kissing your MSFS logbook goodbye.

Mine is of near zero value anyway!

20 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

are those the missing packages?

I can't answer that, but I assume you got the warning message like I quoted in the first post? If yes, how about your Logbook - is it ok?

4 minutes ago, 109Sqn said:

I can't answer that, but I assume you got the warning message like I quoted in the first post? If yes, how about your Logbook - is it ok?

it is ok, I never choose "Yes" when asked.

8 minutes ago, fppilot said:

Mine is of near zero value anyway!

Yup, mine too, although not having any hours in your logbook does apparently qualify you to fly an A320 for PIA, so it is at least kind of 'as real as it gets' in one respect. 

Personally I can't say it bothers me much specifically, but since it is a feature of the sim it should work and that is more of a concern in regards to the overall competence of  the developers.

Edited April 9, 20215 yr by Chock

1 hour ago, Ixoye said:

it is ok, I never choose "Yes" when asked.

That's good, although there seem to be different results for different people. Very typical of this sim.🙄

Still scared to click Yes or No...😧

I was lucky, I clicked NO when I got that message from hell when starting a flight late this afternoon. It let me continue, and the flight went with no problem. I landed, shut down MSFS and restarted and everything was OK, my log book hadn't been touched. 

Now the issue is, do I dare start trying a flight tomorrow? Who knows what havoc will ensue, if this message pops up again. Will it delete my add on aircraft, my SSD drive, my OS, start a fire in my PSU ?    Asobo hasn't said squat about this and it has been going on for over two days. 299 posts on this issue on the MSFS forum,,,,,,    https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/playtime-gone-missing-packages-out-of-date/388213

I can understand why people are willing to give Asobo a pass on issues with a new sim, but my thinking is there is no excuse for them to not even address what this problem is caused by or post a workaround until they get this particular bug fixed. They have to know it is affecting users because there are posts on both forums plus the admins on the MSFS said they have reported this to Asobo. 

Some people have lost over 1,000 hours of time in their logbook and frankly when you sign onto MSFS2020 tomorrow, you may lose whatever hours you have accumulated. 

Asobo needs to step up their game, because right now they are PO many users. 

22 hours ago, 109Sqn said:

That's good, although there seem to be different results for different people. Very typical of this sim.🙄

Some will say that if you lost anything, there is probably something wrong with your PC....LOL

3 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I can understand why people are willing to give Asobo a pass on issues with a new sim, but my thinking is there is no excuse for them to not even address what this problem is caused by or post a workaround until they get this particular bug fixed.

I'm someone who gives them plenty of slack, considering it's such a sophisticated piece of software, particularly as it was rushed out quicker than we, or they, expected it would be, but as you say, they should at least be acknowledging this issue even if they don't yet know of a workaround. 

 

9 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Some will say that if you lost anything, there is probably something wrong with your PC....LOL

As I still have sound running with that warning message on-screen, I am now well over the 1000 hours mark, and that just grates, knowing that it could all be a distant unrecorded memory when I finally decide to click NO. I may just have to do that after I wake up in the morning. It's only a game sim some will say, and it is, but I've invested a lot of time and money into it and would really like to maintain a record of that within the sim.