It is just like how Microsoft wants to control how you use their OS (Windows 10, 11 and future versions).  Gone are the days when I had pretty much total control of if and when Windows would perform updates.  It is impossible to stop Windows 10 from performing the updates when available - sure you can pause any updates for 7 days, but then you lose control and Windows takes charge, like Microsoft knows more than I do about what and when I want things in my control.  Once they changed the appearance of Windows to be more in line with smart phone appearances with icons/apps that appeal to the ones that want the phone/PC to do every thing so they don't have to worry about it.  That disgusted me so much, I keep thinking one day, we will have very little control of our computers.  Their AI and OS will take care of everything they way Microsoft wants, not the end user.

This also is the path MSFS has gone.  Everything cloud based, streaming with the simmer not having the ability to fly without being connected.  I want to have everything at hand on my pc so if my isp or MS/Asobo servers and cloud gets hacked, crashes or loses power, etc., I can still fly.  In other words, don't control when I can fly.  Give me back control. 

XPlane is looking more and more like where I may have to go in the future.  I feel that trying to make MSFS cross platform compatible, they are as many have noted going for more casual gamers who don't care for the details a simmer like myself does.  I just don't see much good coming from the future of MSFS.  That's just me, many here love what Microsoft/Asobo are doing and that's fine, that is their choice & opinion.  I guess I'm in the smaller group of simmers who, being in the minority, will lose out in the end and for me, that means no more Microsoft/Asobo sims.  I shall stick with P3Dv5 and perhaps add XPlane in the future. I fly when I want to, where I want to without all the issues of streaming & cloud.  Down from the soap box I go.  Not trying to offend any one but if you are that sensitive, so be it.

 

1 minute ago, beechcaptain said:

I shall stick with P3Dv5 and perhaps add XPlane in the future.

This is of course a completely valid approach to the new always connected world. 
 

i also try and avoid any cloud based things (Adobe) that don’t actually need the cloud but are merely built that way to extract money. 
 

however, some cloud stuff is genuinely impossible to do without an always on connection. MSFS has 3 PB + of data for the world. That’s genuinely impossible for a a home user to download. 
 

Likewise, playing a MMORPG really does need constant internet. Or YouTube .. can’t imagine a way to have anything like that offline, and the learning resources it provides from cars to woodworking to diy to flight sim to whatever you like. Imagine trying to replace all that with encyclopedias, or live classes or whatever.

So yeah, the physical reality is that some stuff just can’t be done offline,  and then it’s a simple choice - use it online, or use something else that cannot do what the always on thing does, but it still gives you what you’re looking for. 
 

What I really hate is forced subscriptions for software that can work perfectly offline. Adobe/office/capture one/name yours. Thankfully for most of these I have found better alternatives 

I absolutely love the streaming. Loading times are better than with MSFS2020 on my PC. And as someone who frequently (needs to) reinstall(s) Windows MSFS2024 is a dream come true. Instead of having to spend around 3 hours to install MSFS2020 (and frequently visit the PC to select updates and stuff) I have MSFS2024 installed on a clean W11 machine in around 2 (TWO!) minutes. I LOVE IT!

In case it hasn't been noticed already in this thread or others, MSFS 2020 also streamed the core Earth data. Yes, the new one is streaming assets at the moment, but – reiterating the point already made by others – it was and still is the plan to let the user choose to download the same data they could in 2020. They didn't launch with this function, but they planned it pre-launch. It is incoming. So you will be able to run the sim the same way you did the 2020 version: streaming core data and downloading world/city and aircraft data.

Also, I think people believe this is now the equivalent of Google Stadia, which ran over the internet and didn't require user hardware beyond a controller, essentially with your TV simply acting as a monitor for the game being run on Google's servers, including graphics processing. No, this isn't like that. Your expensive CPU and GPU are being used. Processing isn't being done in the cloud as it was with Stadia; your PC is doing the work, with assets being streamed in – which are already installing onto your SSD or M.2 if you have your rolling cache set up, albeit while you're flying as opposed to while the sim is booting up.

Another thing I'm seeing is people thinking that they haven't rebuilt the engine of the sim because of similar bugs in certain areas. They have. This is why they created a 2024, because it was impossible to achieve many things they wanted and the simming community wanted, even something as seemingly simple as that horizon line. You might recall Seb saying in the earlier days of 2020 that unfortunately they couldn't fix the horizon line because it was an issue so embedded in the core engine, to fix it they would need to rebuild it from scratch. He wasn't kidding. That is one of the things they have now eliminated. They needed to rebuild the entire engine because, when Microsoft gave them this project, it came with the caveat that Asobo must use Microsoft's legacy flight simulator code and integrate it with their own. But the legacy code wasn't built for more modern, multi-threaded CPUs. Rebuilding this behemoth means it is now properly built for multi-threading, which means better performance, hence the ability to add the additional sky data layers, effects, exponentially more detailed ground, etc.

This is also why people shouldn't jump to the conclusion there will be a 2028 just because there is a 2024. I think Microsoft genuinely meant it when they said 2020 was a 10-year commitment, until Asobo finally made them realise they can't achieve what they need to while weighed down by legacy code. So they have this new code base. This one could very well be the flight sim that lasts for 10 years. Maybe not, but I don't think this now indicates a 4-year cycle of releases.

 

Edited December 11, 20241 yr by March Hare

3 minutes ago, mistolip said:

I absolutely love the streaming. Loading times are better than with MSFS2020 on my PC. And as someone who frequently (needs to) reinstall(s) Windows MSFS2024 is a dream come true. Instead of having to spend around 3 hours to install MSFS2020 (and frequently visit the PC to select updates and stuff) I have MSFS2024 installed on a clean W11 machine in around 2 (TWO!) minutes. I LOVE IT!

My internet provider charges $$ for Speed.

Cell Phone charges $$ for data.

Currently MSFS2020 / 2024 is not charging extra $$ for very large data transfers.

1 hour ago, March Hare said:

....Another thing I'm seeing is people thinking that they haven't rebuilt the engine of the sim because of similar bugs in certain areas. They have. This is why they created a 2024, because it was impossible to achieve many things they wanted and the simming community wanted, even something as seemingly simple as that horizon line. You might recall Seb saying in the earlier days of 2020 that unfortunately they couldn't fix the horizon line because it was an issue so embedded in the core engine, to fix it they would need to rebuild it from scratch. He wasn't kidding. That is one of the things they have now eliminated.....

Unfortunately, this new engine does not seem to have eliminated all of those MSFS 2020 issues. I have been told by one MSFS 2024 user that those "land bars" still exist in the new simulator. That is very disappointing.

1 hour ago, beechcaptain said:

they are as many have noted going for more casual gamers who don't care for the details a simmer like myself does. 

If that’s true, why all the extra work/improvements/additions around ground physics, soft body physics, flight physics (plane and helicopter), cloud variety, turbulence modeling, water physics, charts, flight planning etc. etc.?

 

1 hour ago, beechcaptain said:

I shall stick with P3Dv5 and perhaps add XPlane in the future. I fly when I want to, where I want to without all the issues of streaming & cloud.

Totally understandable, and I don’t think you’re alone in feeling that lack of control. My only advice would be that you give XPlane a chance. I just don’t see P3D keeping any devs for the commercial market, and IF MS ever pull the plug on MSFS again, XP would be the better fallback.

1 hour ago, beechcaptain said:

they are as many have noted going for more casual gamers who don't care for the details a simmer like myself does.

Name those simulator items that have been downgraded for those 'casual gamers'.

18 hours ago, Lange_666 said:

Really loading in 700GB? 

That guy has no idea how the 2020 works. 

10 minutes ago, Vitold69 said:

That guy has no idea how the 2020 works. 

Please enlighten us all how it works then, considering there’s a correlation between community/official folder sizes and loading times. 
 

I’m not saying it’s loading all 700gb into memory but it must be parsing / processing something which is leading to longer times.
 

My point is the same that Seb made in the dev stream. With the amount of content that can be downloaded for the sim, streaming is the best and only option in most cases.

29 minutes ago, Georgleboui said:

My point is the same that Seb made in the dev stream.

Who would doubt it? 😀

Nobody was asking to download photogrammetry or ground textures. And now you can see how big is downloadable content could be - just around 400GB including garbage sporty planes, career mode and other useless things you don't even need to download. 

If you don't know how to use the Addons Linker I feel sorry for you. Really.

As for lovely Seb. I still absolutely believe the streaming was imposed by "fresh out of the palm tree" MS managers. 

Asobo is a bunch of jörgs but not idiots to make such a decision. But what can you say against people who pay you money?

P.S. Why on Earth MS not contracted some worthy company like iniB or WT? And let them to hire another third party companies. Maybe even hire Jörg as a security guard. 👍🏻

Edited December 12, 20241 yr by Vitold69

Oof, okay. My bad. Here I thought this was a reasonable discussion.

You and that other dude who thought it was all a great Gamer conspiracy should hang out, sounds like you both enjoy dabbling in bad takes.

I have a simple theory as to why Asobo chose streaming: Simply because MSFS 2024 would be too big to run on Xbox if all the files had to be downloaded locally. If I'm not mistaken, the content of MSFS 2024 (excluding scenery streaming) totals 1.4TB of files. That's more than the storage of the Xbox Series X.

MSFS 2020 with all the world updates and additional free content already takes up over 400GB of space. 1.4TB would not be attractive even to PC users. I have a 500 Mbps connection and downloading just the 300GB of MSFS 2020 World Updates takes almost the entire day, because the download is not direct, as it's necessary to download and decompress each of the thousands of packages one by one. I have no idea how long it would take to download 1.4TB of content. Not to mention the loading time with those 1.4TB of files would be significant longer than MSFS 2020 vanilla

Personally, I'm enjoying the streaming, I haven't had many problems with blurry textures since day 1 and I believe the practicality of avoiding having to download thousands of packages of content and the improvement in loading times outweighs any negative points it may have.

Edited December 12, 20241 yr by edu2703

13 hours ago, March Hare said:

Another thing I'm seeing is people thinking that they haven't rebuilt the engine of the sim because of similar bugs in certain areas. They have. This is why they created a 2024, because it was impossible to achieve many things they wanted and the simming community wanted, even something as seemingly simple as that horizon line. You might recall Seb saying in the earlier days of 2020 that unfortunately they couldn't fix the horizon line because it was an issue so embedded in the core engine, to fix it they would need to rebuild it from scratch. He wasn't kidding. That is one of the things they have now eliminated. They needed to rebuild the entire engine because, when Microsoft gave them this project, it came with the caveat that Asobo must use Microsoft's legacy flight simulator code and integrate it with their own. But the legacy code wasn't built for more modern, multi-threaded CPUs. Rebuilding this behemoth means it is now properly built for multi-threading, which means better performance, hence the ability to add the additional sky data layers, effects, exponentially more detailed ground, etc.

This is also why people shouldn't jump to the conclusion there will be a 2028 just because there is a 2024. I think Microsoft genuinely meant it when they said 2020 was a 10-year commitment, until Asobo finally made them realise they can't achieve what they need to while weighed down by legacy code. So they have this new code base. This one could very well be the flight sim that lasts for 10 years. Maybe not, but I don't think this now indicates a 4-year cycle of releases.

 

I think you are a bit naive when it comes to Microsoft. If the 2020 was a 10-year commitment it means that the final project should have been considered final. The release was (just as 2024) a train wreck and Asobo has spent years trying to fix it. So finally, instead of offering THE ONE fix/upgrade they decided to rebrand it, market it as a brand new one and let the end user pay for their mistakes and bad management again. There isn't even an upgrade discount, is there?

Furthermore, from what I have seen and heard so far about the 2024...history repeats itself AGAIN. Maybe the code is better on paper than the old one, I don't know. But most users seem to be getting worse performance vs 2020 - especially VR simmers. One might argue that it has to do with a more complex environment but I am not so sure. I am tempted to blame streaming issues and the good ol bugs again. But what do I know....

 

 

2 hours ago, edu2703 said:

I have a simple theory as to why Asobo chose streaming: Simply because MSFS 2024 would be too big to run on Xbox if all the files had to be downloaded locally. If I'm not mistaken, the content of MSFS 2024 (excluding scenery streaming) totals 1.4TB of files. That's more than the storage of the Xbox Series X.

MSFS 2020 with all the world updates and additional free content already takes up over 400GB of space. 1.4TB would not be attractive even to PC users. I have a 500 Mbps connection and downloading just the 300GB of MSFS 2020 World Updates takes almost the entire day, because the download is not direct, as it's necessary to download and decompress each of the thousands of packages one by one. I have no idea how long it would take to download 1.4TB of content. Not to mention the loading time with those 1.4TB of files would be significant longer than MSFS 2020 vanilla

Personally, I'm enjoying the streaming, I haven't had many problems with blurry textures since day 1 and I believe the practicality of avoiding having to download thousands of packages of content and the improvement in loading times outweighs any negative points it may have.

Yes, absolutely. XBOX is partly to "blame" - that's likely where Microsoft is seeing a lot of the $$$ from this game. 

As for streaming and storage. I mean...I have nothing against the concept. IF it works and that is the whole issue. The performance is clearly not consistent. Sometimes I have a less than optimal net-day and that means that FS won't work properly. And it should be up to the user to decide if the game should be downloadable or not. My theory is that it will be eventually but they figured they should start with streaming, otherwise the servers would totally collapse on day one when everyone wants to download 1.4 TB. That's what happened with 2020.

Clearly they were right because the servers crashed anyway. If I get to choose it would be local storage any day of the week. We pay so much money and invest so many hours tweaking this. A dedicated m.2 drive for 100 dollars? What's the problem? I am not a developer but I assume the same load-when-usage logic can be used. Instead of downloading data from internet you get it from the drive. Like the old days.