After the cluster fuck that was their previous release on top of the mass amount of actual DLC so I can't just buy the game and run with it, there was no way in hell I would buy this game.

The last flight Sim game that I had was flight simulator x, and honestly even that one if I hadn't got it as a gift I probably wouldn't have purchased because even that, the amount of DLC that it had was outrageous, I was lucky enough that I got it on disc so I'm not bombarded with them all the time, but I had looked at the steam page because I was curious about it and man was I in for a shock.

I wish I still had all the discs to my flight simulator 2004, it did basically the same exact thing that X did, and arguably was better than the previous iteration of flight simulator without all of the stupid paywalls. I just threw the disc in and it ran, didn't have to wait days for it to download, it didn't monopolize part of my drive and it didn't need a NASA supercomputer plus Internet to run

[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Turns out that a massive Earth-scale game that requires streaming of gigabytes worth of data every play session for each user and has next to no local storage is a really awful idea.

X-plane 12 is looking better and better.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

This is one of the most dumbest Parts of this game, everyone's complaint of the last iteration was the massive download times, and the inefficiencies in the game causing it to lag even on high end systems. And their solution to that was to increase the specs that it's required to run the game and require a high speed internet on top of that? They more or less made it so anyone running satellite internet can't buy their game and anyone that lives in like 70% of the US that still has absolute dog shit internet speeds couldn't even imagine playing it. My mom still has a 5/5 mbit/s, that's the fastest anyone offers in her area, even downloading the previous game took ages there's no way in hell I'm going to recommend her buying this game

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So far, I can get into a single Free Flight AS LONG AS I ONLY SELECT A DEPARTURE. If I place a destination airport, it doesn't load. That has worked pretty consistently. I had a lovely time flying poorly over North Korea, Gaza, and Ukraine.

Edit: Also should have mentioned, I can literally only get one flight to work. If I back out and try to do another one, it doesn't load until I reboot the game. It's not great, but it's worked for me if you're jonesing to try it out. An individual activity also successfully loaded for me the one time I tried, but it was a pretty long load (~3-4 minutes maybe). YMMV.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 100 points 1 day ago (6 children)

If anything this reflects badly upon Microsoft's cloud business. Dynamically spinning up enough servers shouldn't be an issue nowadays.

[–] Voytrekk@lemmy.world 70 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It's a consistent issue for Microsoft releases. You would think a company that sells cloud services would be capable of having a smooth launch.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Reminds me of Amazon Games' disastrous MMO launches in Europe because they refused to add more server capacity for European players until they left in droves. For comparison the US servers had more than three times as much capacity at launch.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (3 children)

There is a nearly zero percent chance that the game developers are also cloud experts. Having the same parent company means almost nothing, especially when you get to the size of places like Microsoft. The internal bureaucracy can actually make getting things accomplished properly worse. External contracts are usually pretty clear on what's provided for the payment. Internal processes are often much more blurry, if not completely muddy.

[–] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 2 points 11 hours ago

That's the problem then, they should have hired some cloud experts if they're selling a cloud-first service as a "game".

[–] superkret@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

When your game is a streaming service, you better put some cloud experts on the dev team.

[–] Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 day ago

There is a nearly zero percent chance that the game developers are also cloud experts

Well yeah, that's why you would put some cloud experts on the project besides the game devs if you're doing things like this. It's not just game developers working on the game.

Doesn't even have to be people feom the Azure team. Microsoft has plenty of resources to teach someone to be a cloud expert in other branches, they even offer certifications for outside people, surely they can manage a few of their own.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

One might argue this kind of thing is inevitable when your solution to everything is "the cloud".

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (3 children)

According to Asobo, this issue was caused by a cache that was overloaded and constantly restarting. This was used in part of the authentication process, I believe when they check what content you have. This explains why people had missing content if they were lucky enough to get in. This was my experience - got in after a very long load time and then couldn’t really do anything due to missing content.

This doesn’t seem like it’s a Microsoft cloud issue per se, it seems like Asobo had a single point of failure in the design that didn’t scale well. Today seems like the CDN limits are finally being reached, as it took a while to load up new areas. Getting into the game was no issue, though.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

the cloud services are probably fine, their willingness to actually use the resources for a game may not be.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

The asset streaming requirements are insane- they recommend having a 150mbps connection for a smooth experience with 50mbps as a minimum. Microsoft says they only planned for 250k players at launch, which is stupid considering FS 2020 had over a million sales at launch...

load more comments (7 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago (12 children)

God I love having a future where my ability to play a fucking flight simulator depends on both internet access and server reliability.

Completely unnecessary to boot. Store a low res copy locally, offer the high res as regional packs. 0 reason to stream this data in.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

If you want a functional flight simulator that doesn’t require you constantly online , try out XPlane or Aerofly FS4. These games will work even if Microsoft puts out another steaming pile of shit in the next 4 years.

load more comments (11 replies)

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Kinda wild that their previous flight simulator was met with near flawless reviews across the board, then the complete opposite for the immediate successor that probably shares 90% of the same code.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Just like Windows versions.

[–] lustyargonian@lemm.ee 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think the issue was precisely that. They didn't plan for the surge of users coming in on day one and whatever cloud hybrid system they have for this game got overwhelmed. We'll get to know about the game's actual quality a week from now I guess.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Works fine now that they fixed the problem, but that was an oops for sure.

load more comments