Ridiculous update size?

[turbomax 3,285]

52 minutes ago, flibberflops said:

I only treid deleteing that folder because I found a post that said it might help deleting the folder even if it was empty)n

I think that is the problem right there. before the last SU5 update, I had renamed the community folder (which I always do before installing updates to stop the updater from erasing this folder when it creates a new one. I then created a new community folder but accidentally misspelled it, something like "cammunity" and the result was the MSFS icon had gone from the task bar and the game could not be started anymore and suggested a complete re-install. fortunately I discovered my mistake, renamed that folder back to its proper "community" name and luckily I could start MSFS as before. I think removing a default asset is considered a corrupt/incomplete installation and MSFS then attempts a repair install, i.e. downloads the whole 100 gigabyte yards.

Edited August 12, 2021 by turbomax

[flibberflops 74]

21 minutes ago, JYW said:

But wouldn't you want that? ...... to download all the older updates you missed, I mean?

Indeed yes. However if 3 months of missed updates is 115Gb then either Asobo has changed 90% of the Sim or thier updates are terribly ineffecient.

Edited August 12, 2021 by flibberflops

[PIC007 82]

I agree that the whole process is time consuming, excessive, and frustrating. What makes it even more so is that once you finish the main updates, you then have to go to the 'Content Manager' and do it all over again for stuff you already have installed........I have a fast internet and it still takes hours,

[flibberflops 74]

3 minutes ago, turbomax said:

I think that is the problem right there. before the last SU5 update, I had renamed the community folder (which I always do before installing updates to stop the updater from erasing this folder when it creates a new one. I then created a new community folder but accidentally misspelled it, something like "cammunity" and the result was the MSFS icon had gone from the task bar and the game could not be started anymore and suggested a complete re-install. fortunately I discovered my mistake, renamed that folder back to its proper "community" name and luckily I could start MSFS as before. I think removing a default asset is considered a corrupt/incomplete installation and MSFS then attempts a repair install, i.e. downloads the whole 100 gigabyte yards.

Unfortunately you haven't read my orginal post. To clarify...

It tried to download 115GB when I first started it after a 3 month gap.

It was only after that download failed that I touched anyting. The community folder delete was only a reaction to get the download working again and I accept my actions after that resulted in a full download. Howvever that does not explain the orginal requirrement for 115GB update

[turbomax 3,285]

2 minutes ago, PIC007 said:

I agree that the whole process is time consuming, excessive, and frustrating. What makes it even more so is that once you finish the main updates, you then have to go to the 'Content Manager' and do it all over again for stuff you already have installed........I have a fast internet and it still takes hours,

add to this other unexpected required updates like xbox app etc. if you don't watch the MS store carefully for other components that might need updating, it could also stop the update process to trigger at all. this happened with SU5 update to several users.

[himmelhorse 1,276]

I have to make a comment here.

Approximately 26GB of each download is (for me) unwanted liveries of default aircraft. You can delete them and this takes a lot of time, however, you achieve nothing because they will be redownloaded the next time you fire up the sim.

I think the point that the OP is making is that for some reason we are downloading almost the complete sim with each update, ( I do know that these update sizes vary, but mostly they are fairly enormous) but why cannot MSFS/Asobo simply package an update that will modify the items which are to be updated and then simply add the updates instead of reloading almost everything.

I, for one, dread the updates, despite the fact that after an appreciable amount of fiddling, fixing and tweaking, I am always better off in the long run. This sim, in fits and starts is constantly improving but it is certainly done in an erratic manner.

Tony  

[flibberflops 74]

The other point I would like to highlight from my orginal post is how poor the "Checking for updates" situation is. Yeah sure, in my case I caused the problem. However in this day and age for updates to cause an issue that you cannot recover is again rediculous. Steam never has this kind of issue.

[mobeans10 197]

I haven't seen my PC for about a month and probably won't have access for another week or two. I'm interested to see the downloads that get me from SU4 to where we are now having missed an update and two hotfixes

[Dominique_K 10,149]

I add my voice here. The 40+20 GB SU5 was a pain for people not fiber connected and capped. This is all the more incomprehensible for a layman like me, that the imagery comes with the streaming. What in Heavens does the package contain ?  

[JimBrown 596]

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I add my voice here. The 40+20 GB SU5 was a pain for people not fiber connected and capped. This is all the more incomprehensible for a layman like me, that the imagery comes with the streaming. What in Heavens does the package contain ?  

What is installed to your system is all the aircraft, all the hand crafted airports, all the nav data, all the bushtrips, all the discovery flights, all the tutorials, all the landing challenges, all the airport generic models, building models, prop models, texture models, all the simobjects (animals, boats, characters, landmarks, miscellaneous, vehicles), all the virtual cockpit instruments, a whole bunch of basic stuff, including basic terrain (for when no internet connection available, or turned off), and anything from the market place (except what is streamed for world updates, see below).

What is streamed is detailed terrain (textures and DEM), photogrammetry (if enabled), weather (if live), live traffic (if enabled), multiplayer traffic (if enabled). Maybe a few other things.

So, any time there is a major update, there are potentially a lot of files on your local system that may need to be updated. With the way the update currently works, any file that is changed is replaced in its entirety.

It would be nice if the update process applied a delta so that only the part of a file that changed is actually changed, but that presents a whole host of other problems that can easily result in a completely borked installation that would require the entire game to be reinstalled.

...jim

 

[cobalt 798]

Not to beat a dead horse, but SU5 is NOT large in terms of net increase to your MSFS files. Most of it is replacement for already existing files.

[SilentShadow NB 0]

The same thing is happening to me and has done for about a year. Every time I update it, it’s expecting me to download the sim entirely. I have absolutely no add ons, I always kept the sim as is. I keep the sim updated, I keep my pc updated, all drives too. I can not for the life of me figure out why it does this and it’s incredibly off putting, I dread every update that comes out, each time it’s 115.03GB. Luckily I have 1GB speed internet but it does still take a while to download a file of that size, especially when you just want to get on and fly and instead your met with that monstrosity. I feel for people who have slow internet speeds having to put up with that tbh. I have this on the series s (I haven’t been able to buy the series x yet) and it never does this but on the pc, it’s a whole other issue and I do actually prefer it on pc, these updates are crazy though. 

[AvAngel 306]

115 is the full game... something odd there...


My overall install with addons is only like 150, and I have a LOT of addons. Each update has been 20-30gb of data, a lot of which is replacing as others have said, overall size creep has been relatively decent.

People want sexy pretty gorgeous games, bigger textures need more space... heck, Red Dead 2, which is a far smaller area than this game, but massive for a shooter, is 110gb. Space takes space.

Edited January 26, 2022 by AvAngel

[Matchstick 1,886]

 

On 8/12/2021 at 9:08 PM, JYW said:

But wouldn't you want that? ...... to download all the older updates you missed, I mean?

It depends - it's wasteful since if a file has changed in 4 different updates you'll download that file 4 times but only keep the last one.

But it has the advantage of ensuring that everyone on the same version should have the exactly the same files no matter upgrade path they took.

[toprob 105]

Although I've never had download issues on my new system, and most updates are done in minutes, I still have my old PC which I use to see how my scenery performs on an older system. The last time I tried this, it had been a long time since it was updated, so I was ok with a 100+GB download. However it is frustrating watching the livery updates etc which I'll never ever use:(

One tip, after almost three hours of downloading to about 25% I paused the download, shut it down and moved the PC through to where the router is so I could plug it in. The rest of the download came in under an hour via ethernet.