#1 Reason why I get discouraged using MSFS...

[Noel]

25 minutes ago, Daube said:

...a side note, you should also check that your MSFS folder and MSFS main process (.exe) are declared as "exclusions" in your antivirus software (I use the default MS Defender).

I just added exclusions to Defender so after a restart will see if any impact before moving on to the comm folder.

[fppilot]

16 hours ago, willy647 said:

I have 25 GB in my community folder. My not so new PC takes about 2 min to bring up the MSFS selection screen.

I am in the two minute bracket.  My Community folder holds shortcuts via Addons Linker.  The amount of addons linked varies from flight to flight.  I only load what I need.  I have about six world updates installed.  

My broadband connection is 200 MBPS via fiber cable from a relatively small ISP.

Is there a possibility those with longer load times have slower connections or ISPs that are  "throttling" them?

Edited August 4 by fppilot

[Watsi]

23 hours ago, Sethos said:

Fortunately that changes with MSFS 2024. Seems they are going away from the long consistency check and only loading what is needed. That should cut down loading times significantly, especially when you got a lot of things installed. 

My assumption is, with MSFS2024 you will have less to load from your local storage, but more from the Azure cloud. So it won't depend (as much) on your HDD/SSD anymore, but even more on your connection to the servers (which can vary from day to day). I'm actually not sure, if this is an improvement.

Edited August 4 by Watsi

[Sethos]

5 minutes ago, Watsi said:

My assumption is, with MSFS2024 you will have less to load from your local storage, but more from the Azure cloud. So it won't depend (as much) on your HDD/SSD anymore, but even more on your connection to the servers (which can vary from day to day). I'm actually not sure, if this is an improvement.

But your local addons aren't moving to the server, that is by far the biggest toll on your load times, loading thousands of local files, performing the consistency check, pre-loading and caching assets etc. the entire simulator isn't moving to the cloud. As they also said, they are moving to more selective loading as well, so whatever you get from the servers, you aren't just downloading the entire thing but what you need, the textures in the appropriate resolution, the needed mipmaps etc. so even with additional assets from the server, it's still gonna be a lot more efficient. 

[willy647]

6 hours ago, fppilot said:

I am in the two minute bracket.  My Community folder holds shortcuts via Addons Linker.  The amount of addons linked varies from flight to flight.  I only load what I need.  I have about six world updates installed.  

My broadband connection is 200 MBPS via fiber cable from a relatively small ISP.

Is there a possibility those with longer load times have slower connections or ISPs that are  "throttling" them?

I also use Addons Linker depending on my flight, otherwise I would have 500GB in my community folder

I have a 350 MBps cable connection and yes, maybe that influences the startup time - don't know ......

[Watsi]

1 hour ago, Sethos said:

But your local addons aren't moving to the server, that is by far the biggest toll on your load times, loading thousands of local files, performing the consistency check, pre-loading and caching assets etc. the entire simulator isn't moving to the cloud. As they also said, they are moving to more selective loading as well, so whatever you get from the servers, you aren't just downloading the entire thing but what you need, the textures in the appropriate resolution, the needed mipmaps etc. so even with additional assets from the server, it's still gonna be a lot more efficient. 

Yes, that's my point. 🙂
Addons from 3rd party vendors will (pressumably) still be stored on your drive. No change here - will still take time.

Even if you use Addonlinker now - and maybe have two airports active for the flight - MSFS2020 takes its time to load - without preloading massive amount of scenery, assets, etc.
There will for sure be some benefit from the cloud based storage (and loading less unneeded stuff), but I'm not sure if this won't be eaten up by smaller 'bandwith' when loading more stuff from online sources. Keep in mind, not everybody owns a 250Mbit connection. Also we already experienced enough server outages. And no internet connection beats your 'local SSD bandwith'. 🙂

By the way - I'm not sure how Microsoft will handle his own marketplace >addons. Could be an additional DRM feature to keep (part of) them in the cloud and load the data only when needed. So your (bought) addons are bound to your profile and your profile only.

Edited August 4 by Watsi

[Sethos]

1 hour ago, Watsi said:

Yes, that's my point. 🙂
Addons from 3rd party vendors will (pressumably) still be stored on your drive. No change here - will still take time.

Even if you use Addonlinker now - and maybe have two airports active for the flight - MSFS2020 takes its time to load - without preloading massive amount of scenery, assets, etc.
There will for sure be some benefit from the cloud based storage (and loading less unneeded stuff), but I'm not sure if this won't be eaten up by smaller 'bandwith' when loading more stuff from online sources. Keep in mind, not everybody owns a 250Mbit connection. Also we already experienced enough server outages. And no internet connection beats your 'local SSD bandwith'. 🙂

By the way - I'm not sure how Microsoft will handle his own marketplace >addons. Could be an additional DRM feature to keep (part of) them in the cloud and load the data only when needed. So your (bought) addons are bound to your profile and your profile only.

I agree that it might become a bit more bandwidth intensive but not by much. If you remove local addons from the equation, the client files themselves which are also going to be locally installed, then you are mostly left with the exact same stuff we're downloading today that directly impacts loading times, like the terrain data (which is by far and away the biggest bandwidth hog), weather data, other player data, profile information exchange to the cloud etc. in MSFS 2024 I think the biggest change will be additional terrain data (from all the new advanced scenery we're seeing) and chart information.

Outside of that, the thin client principle focus a lot on selective downloading, i.e 'what do you want available in your sim', do I want all the default planes? do you want these included 'premium' airports? Do you want this mission package? so you can trim down your installation to what you need, instead of having to have everything installed, potentially taking up a hundred gigabyte plus of stuff you never use.  

I absolutely do not foresee a scenario where we're downloading gigabytes of data from the cloud each time we load up a scenario, having to download critical sim files, the planes we fly, the missions and airports on-the-fly. Same with their Marketplace, that bandwidth impact by doing something like that would be absolutely insane on their end, load times would skyrocket if you had to download your DLC on each load for security reasons. Marketplace files are already pretty secure in their current form. 

We'll see what happens but I absolutely do not think we're just coming full circle with the same load time due to bandwidth, that would make no sense. MSFS is one of the slowest loading sims available due to inefficient ways of doing things, so there's plenty of low-hanging fruits ripe for picking in terms of optimizing load times and they touting the load time improvements themselves, so I'll remain hopeful 👍

[Watsi]

I think we're on the same page in general. Although what you describe is a perfectly balanced thin client. And we will see if Asobo is capable of doing so. 😉

The marketplace DRM was cracked a long time ago. So we'll see what they do (btw, not talking about downloading the whole content on the fly, but some parts of it)

[Bobsk8]

I figured something out this week. My data usage in the last couple of months went through the roof, causing me to sign up for unlimited data with Xfinity. I realized, that this was probably due to using Auto FPS, which changed my TLOD from 120 where I had it set, to 200 when in cruise, hence the increased data. I tried going back to 120, but didn't like the way it looked anymore. I imagine that data usage for MSFS 2024 will be even higher. 

Edited August 4 by Bobsk8

[Brandon01110]

23 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

The problem with talking about load times is that what is 'acceptable' for one, may not be for another.  So I think it is almost pointless, though I think we can all agree on wanting it to be quicker at least.

I think most can agree 6 minutes is pretty excessive.  Granted, my load times seem a little under that but not by much.  I do as an other member pointed out, I start the sim, wait for the update screen and then change over to my web browser if no updates are available.  I pull up simbrief and flight radar 24 to plan what flight i'm in the mood for and start creating the simbrief flight plan. 

Imagine if we could all commit to doing situps until it gets to the main screen, some would be pretty fit.

[JacquesBrel]

35 minutes ago, Brandon01110 said:

Imagine if we could all commit to doing situps until it gets to the main screen

That would be my #1 reason discouraging me from using MSFS...

[Tuskin38]

2 hours ago, Watsi said:

The marketplace DRM was cracked a long time ago.

Jorg said at FSExpo that they've got plans to counter than, but they can't talk about it.

Also during on the Dev Q&As in the last couple years he said they can track users who are using cracked marketplace addons.

Edited August 4 by Tuskin38

[altenae]

Bandwidth Error.............................

[Roy Warren]

Don't understand why 3 to 6 minutes is considered a long time for start up, and flying for an hour or two over water is okay, with nothing but instruments and water to look at. 

 

[Noel]

2 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

I tried going back to 120, but didn't like the way it looked anymore.

I had a potentially high detail/complexity scene at about 10K feet AGL and set TLOD at 100 and took a good solid look at it then switched to 200 and the difference was so modest as to be almost nil.  I use DynamicLOD and range from 60 on the ground to 130 or 160 depending on which profile and to be honest I don't see much difference but the performance impact can be substantial.  TLOD in MSFS is highly overrated, IMO!