MSFS: A Victim of Its Own Huge Success

[David Mills 4,774]

At first blush, it may seem silly to compare Microsoft Flight Simulator to singing sensation Taylor Swift. But there is a close parallel between the two in one important way. Both MSFS and Swift have become so popular and in-demand that fans are sometimes frustrated at the inaccessibility of their beloved product. For those who don't follow Swift's singing career, she recently launched a new schedule of personal appearances and began selling tickets. Demand was so overwhelming that Ticketmaster's servers crashed, leaving her fans irked and shaking their fists in the air. It wasn't Swift's fault. She wanted her fans to be happy. But demand for tickets was underestimated, and so ticket-selling servers couldn't handle the overload of customers.

Likewise, MSFS is currently suffering the same problem in at least three ways. Perhaps you can think of more:

1. Microsoft/Asobo servers have been overwhelmed recently by the number of new users. Many report disconnect problems or bandwidth issues with photogrammetry. Others report Multiplayer or Live Traffic or Live Weather issues. There is no great technical mystery here: The servers are inadequate. Taylor Swift can relate.
2. As Asobo admitted two weeks ago, there is a huge backlog of products in the pipeline for the in-sim Marketplace. Needless to say, Asobo and third-party developers want these products up and on sale as quickly as possible. Time is money, and delaying the sale of ready-to-market products is the last thing anyone wants -- developers, customers, or Asobo. Asobo is addressing this backlog by allowing third-party vendors to be responsible for their own Marketplace quality control (Captain Sim notwithstanding). But the point is that high popularity and excitement about MSFS have resulted in this backlog. This is a nice problem to have, but it is still a problem. Again, MSFS is a victim of its own huge success.
3. Finally, as I'm sure you've noticed, forum traffic, both here and elsewhere, has exploded in recent months. This time last year, I could easily read all daily posts in the MSFS forums in one sitting. Today, I can't begin to keep up. New posts often scroll off the bottom of the first page before most visitors ever see them. I've also experienced occasional difficulty in recent weeks accessing various MSFS forums due to bandwidth issues (though these delays have been short and immediately remedied). If you're running a website, you want interest to be high and demand to be great. So I congratulate all the people running AVSIM. You've made our lives a lot more interesting and entertaining and informed. We're all better simmers because of you. But I suspect that some of you are sometimes overworked.

My overall point is that success -- whether Taylor Swift or MSFS -- often brings more work and responsibility and more technical demands of hardware than originally anticipated. The good news is that these "problems" are well understood and therefore potentially easy to solve. 
 

[Dominique_K 10,150]

First, if there is any victim that would be us, David ! Did you see any info on a sudden wave of new users ? That would be unusual for a mature product. There are  many reasons why the servers couldn't apparently cope with the demand.

I am not sure that Asobo is in charge of the store. I would rather say Micrcosoft. And from the start it was not a miracle of efficiency anyway.

I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of Swift Taylor before. So I went to Youtube to listen to her.  I like my cat better.

[Matchstick 1,886]

I'm not sure any of this is new.

MS probably weren't expecting MSFS to be as big a good as it was but we can thank the Pandemic for at least some part of that and since launch there have been multiple periods where it's felt like MS have struggled to assign the resources MSFS requires.

For example the time around the disastrous launch of SU5 for example saw support struggling to deal with the fall out from the botched release then the marketplace failing to get updated for weeks at an end.

And server issue arent new either (though the irony of that with a product intended to showcase the pretty of Azure and Bing shouldn't be underestimated) enough so that MS were forced to add dedicated server status thread to the very top of the forum.

[abrams_tank 7,426]

@David Mills I agree. MSFS is a huge success among the “hard core” flight sim enthusiasts as demonstrated by the  last Navigraph survey. And it is gaining momentum in this demographic as the last Navigraph survey showed,

And it’s not even at its peak yet. There are still a number of high fidelity planes coming out, from A2A, to FSLabs, to Majestic, to iFly. When planes from these notable 3rd party devs come out, MSFS will catapult itself to yet another level.

It’s also frightening the pace that MSFS is improving. For example, on release, the flight sim community were mocking MSFS for having poor avionics and being a poor flight simulator for IFR flight. Now MSFS has the best default G1000, G3000, G5000, GNS 430, and GNS 530. MSFS has some of the best default GA avionics, and it’s arguably one of the best flight simulator for GA IFR flight because of the default GA avionics.

Edited March 28, 2023 by abrams_tank

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.  I predict a subscription model is just around the corner.

If that would mean quality, stable service, ala Netflix, I would pay a monthly fee.

[vincentrouleau 71]

If I am willing to fork over that much annual money to Navigraph, I can afford a 'Premium' subscrition fee to Asobo.

[bobcat999 8,484]

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of Swift Taylor before. So I went to Youtube to listen to her.  I like my cat better.

I have never seen or heard your cat, but I think I would like it better as well!  

As for MSFS being a victim of it's own success, I think that if they feel generous enough to give people like me a generous 33% discount for life in the marketplace (I will take it thank you very much! ), then I think it is more a victim of poor planning, management, and infrastructure provision rather than a shortage of cash.

[Krakin 5,775]

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.  I predict a subscription model is just around the corner.

If that would mean quality, stable service, ala Netflix, I would pay a monthly fee.

At this point, this is not that far removed from the flat earth theory for me.

[orchestra_nl 936]

52 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

As for MSFS being a victim of it's own success, I think that if they feel generous enough to give people like me a generous 33% discount for life in the marketplace (I will take it thank you very much! ), then I think it is more a victim of poor planning, management, and infrastructure provision rather than a shortage of cash.

We can all speculate on how much money Microsoft has earned -and is still earning- from MSFS but we just don't know. I am hoping it is a lot so this enterprise will not be abandoned.

But servers aren't made of money; they are made of hardware that is still pretty hard to get. There is an increasing demand for network infrastructure and supply is limited, delivery of new network hardware can take up to 18 months these days.

[Silicus 881]

Well, there is a real leadership problem within msfs/asobo, key issues have not been addressed more than 2 1/2 years after release. If it only would be growing pains, they should have been resolved by now.

Not only is the connection issue a constant reminder how dependent we are on the largest company in world in their field, Microsoft, every time we fire up msfs. 

The promised Photogrammetry, the biggest simulator advancement of all time, is a useless, melted mess. I turned it off months ago. I have a 1GB internet connection....

The promised 'real time traffic' is, again, a mess, unfinished and I have to make use of third party solutions, which is fine.

I can not do that with 'real weather' as they do not allow proper access for third parties. The weather is still largely unfinished, with a dozen cloud types missing, abrupt weather changes, not matching metars  etc

Airport vehicles drive on taxiways, fork lifts are seen on runways...

They did so many things right, but so many things not.

But it is a 10 year project, so I guess we just have to be patient or go somewhere else, but where?

- RANT OFF -

from a passionate simmer.

 

 

 

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

The problem with the MarketPlace is you can buy stuff but the download is so slow I give up..I have gigs of stuff to install but I just don't bother.

sp

[Fiorentoni 4,253]

3 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.  I predict a subscription model is just around the corner.

If that would mean quality, stable service, ala Netflix, I would pay a monthly fee.

Or high demand somehow means many sales, as in the rest of the economy, and therefore they have enough "funds". No idea how you came up with that conclusion.

[edpatino 1,965]

3 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

To keep up with demand, MS will have to look at another funding model to keep the service performing well across the globe.  I predict a subscription model is just around the corner.

If that would mean quality, stable service, ala Netflix, I would pay a monthly fee.

Why to give them bad ideas?

[Fiorentoni 4,253]

50 minutes ago, Silicus said:

Well, there is a real leadership problem within msfs/asobo, key issues have not been addressed more than 2 1/2 years after release. If it only would be growing pains, they should have been resolved by now.

 

I strongly disagree. I was an adamant critical of MSFS and Asobo in the early days, but they've made SO much out of this that this has easily become the best simulator in so many fields.
Most of your points are not really valid, since you only see them as absolute (from a "perfection" POV) instead of relative to what other flight sims do offer and have offered.

The promised Photogrammetry, the biggest simulator advancement of all time, is a useless, melted mess. I turned it off months ago. I have a 1GB internet connection....
It's not useless, it's beautiful in VFR and okayish in IFR (beautiful before landing and after takeoff). Even if I'd agree - you can turn it off as you did and still have the by far best autogen in flight sim history.

The promised 'real time traffic' is, again, a mess, unfinished and I have to make use of third party solutions, which is fine.
There's no real time traffic in-built in any other sim. 3rd party solutions work great, so not a negative in relation to other sims. I'd rather point out the abysamal AI traffic routines which affect 3rd party solutions, too. That's a key issue.

I can not do that with 'real weather' as they do not allow proper access for third parties. The weather is still largely unfinished, with a dozen cloud types missing, abrupt weather changes, not matching metars  etc
In a functional way, yes, it's unfinished and probably the only point I'd fully agree with you. Still I'd take a MSFS cloud over a P3D cloud any given day.

Airport vehicles drive on taxiways, fork lifts are seen on runways...
This can be easily avoided by airport creators by adding proper routes, at least I don't see fork lifts on the runway in high quality airports. Also in a relative view: There aren't even animated people in that other flight sim released in 2022, so... Also - that's what you consider a "key issue"?

MSFS offers so much that even for me - a procedural high realism IFR simmer - it's the best I could wish for. If/When they finally complete the weather and fix AI traffic, I wouldn't know what would still be missing for flight sim perfection.

 

[V1ROTA7E 718]

1 hour ago, Silicus said:

The promised Photogrammetry, the biggest simulator advancement of all time, is a useless, melted mess. I turned it off months ago. I have a 1GB internet connection....

I feel your pain…HOWEVER, over these past few years I’ve switched between having it on and off, and have finally settled with it ‘On’ for now. It’s by no means perfect, but it has improved significantly, in my opinion. Even with TLOD at 120 in VR, it still looks great. This is with rolling cache off. Try it out and see if it’s improved for you. 

 

1 hour ago, Silicus said:

The weather is still largely unfinished, with a dozen cloud types missing, abrupt weather changes, not matching metars  etc

Again I hear you, but weather has improved quite drastically. I too wish they’d open up the weather engine to 3rd party developers, but it is what it is I guess. I’m finding metars much more accurate with respect to wind, altimeter/qnh, and visibility. Remember when there was no fog? I just hope they get around to creating more accurately depicted cloud types.