Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has "overwhelmingly negative" Steam reviews due to launch issues, including endless load times caused by server issues.
Hi res, sure. Make it optional, or let players download the region they like. Or just the airports with much lower res landscapes, etc etc.
Or just, let them have it all and make these choices. Memory is CHEAP nowadays. If you’re a flight sim enthusiast, a few terabytes for the map data is the least expensive part of your setup by far.
Yup. Comcast/Xfinity residential cable. I pay like $80/mo and still have that cap. They also had an outage yesterday for like 5 hours for maintenance that was clearly planned ahead of time, but they never bothered to tell me ahead of time, and when the outage happened, they still gave me a bad estimate of when it would be restored due to “network damage”.
Supposedly, the full map is measured in petabytes.
This is actually a perfectly reasonable use of streaming assets for full-resolution, since almost no players will ever experience even 1 percent of the map.
Precisely this – I don’t remember anyone complaining that the FS2020 install size was too large, even if its install size was the butt of a few good-natured jokes. They’ve solved a problem that didn’t exist and in doing so have turned FS into an always online internet-connected live service instead of a game. I’m not touching this game with a 40 foot aileron until an offline mode of some quality exists.
Sure, but it had an offline mode and had a base level globe that was downloaded when the game was installed that you could use immediately and didn’t require live cloud connectivity in order for basic functionality to work. Additionally, it allowed you to pre-download large chunks of high detailed land for offline use as well.
Wouldn’t that end up being hundreds of gigabytes per region file?
For low res, no.
Hi res, sure. Make it optional, or let players download the region they like. Or just the airports with much lower res landscapes, etc etc.
Or just, let them have it all and make these choices. Memory is CHEAP nowadays. If you’re a flight sim enthusiast, a few terabytes for the map data is the least expensive part of your setup by far.
My internet service in Silicon Valley charges like $1/GB above 1TB of usage per month :(
Just so we’re clear, that’s a wired service?
Yup. Comcast/Xfinity residential cable. I pay like $80/mo and still have that cap. They also had an outage yesterday for like 5 hours for maintenance that was clearly planned ahead of time, but they never bothered to tell me ahead of time, and when the outage happened, they still gave me a bad estimate of when it would be restored due to “network damage”.
Supposedly, the full map is measured in petabytes.
This is actually a perfectly reasonable use of streaming assets for full-resolution, since almost no players will ever experience even 1 percent of the map.
Precisely this – I don’t remember anyone complaining that the FS2020 install size was too large, even if its install size was the butt of a few good-natured jokes. They’ve solved a problem that didn’t exist and in doing so have turned FS into an always online internet-connected live service instead of a game. I’m not touching this game with a 40 foot aileron until an offline mode of some quality exists.
Fs2020 streamed assets, too
Sure, but it had an offline mode and had a base level globe that was downloaded when the game was installed that you could use immediately and didn’t require live cloud connectivity in order for basic functionality to work. Additionally, it allowed you to pre-download large chunks of high detailed land for offline use as well.