The moment is finally here and Microsoft Flight Simulator has been unleashed on to the world with a globe spanning scenery package that pushes the envelope on technology in simulation. This is an exciting time but not one without some challenges. If you’ve been struggling to get the sim installed or working correctly, you’re not alone and here’s what we know.
Known issues
The launch of the new sim has been, a bit rocky in places. While some seem to be up and running without trouble, others are struggling in different ways to get the sim to work.
Stories of installers pausing halfway through the lengthy download process is common. Some have seen messages indicating that they need to “Please insert disk” are obviously an issue that feels off in the modern age of digital downloads, and missing Premium content is a bit of a challenge too for those who have purchased the higher end versions of the sim.
Fortunately, many of these have already been solved while others are still awaiting a fix. Microsoft and Asobo Studios have put together a Knowledge Base which, for the moment, contains six known problems including the ones above.
Unknown solutions
Other problems with sometimes less obvious solutions are also out there. Crashing and hard locks of the software as well as performance issues. I myself struggled to fly a route that I regularly flew during the alpha and beta without issue thanks to both a few crashes and some severe performance issues.
Unsurprisingly with a launch of a new sim with the level of complexity as this one that there would be some growing pains and that the new sim may not work 100% on launch day. Urgent patches and continued efforts by Asobo Studios to smooth out the rough patches will hopefully pay off sooner than later.
And it’s not all bad either as many are having good experiences and seeing good performance. With any luck, we’ll see everything start to come together more and more over the coming days.
Stormbirds 
After installing this, flying around my area, seeing the grass, trees, clouds, everything… in vanilla state… guess I will never fire up xplane again, there’s just no reason!
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How’s the performance for you? Some folks seem to be having no trouble running it.
The local scenery is pretty amazing!
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For me the same but also amaze to see so many human pilots everywhere. I went to Miami and it was crazy crowded..
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Interesting! Nobody flying over Toronto when I was there. But I expect that will change.
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Bought the standard version through Steam, installed perfectly and performance is really good at 1080p on a 3700X/32GB RAM/2060 Super. Runs like a charm.
I’m loving it!
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At the moment it seems extra heavy on RAM so you’re probably very well served by that 32GB.
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My System: i7-8700 @4,3 GHz, 16 GB Ram, 1TB SSD, GTX 1070 Ti
Running at 2560×1440, sim at medium/high settings 35 – 40 fps…
Greetings from Germany..
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Performance seems pretty good (once I got it running, after 3 hours of troubleshooting a CTD at start screen)
This is by far the buggiest flight sim I’ve ever seen. Did they actually beta test it?
If you don’t have Windows English (US) language pack installed, the above CTD on start happens. (obviously there were no beta testers in any non US, English speaking country)
Many default key bindings simply don’t work (for me anyway)
Setting an unsupported joystick up was difficult to say the least, had to search online to discover you have to click in the SEARCH BY INPUT box first (judging by the number of google results for this I am not alone in being stumped by this)
Once set up, the throttle axis behaves strangely, extremely slow to respond and seems almost as if it is a digital on/cruise/off switch rather than analogue input.
And so on.
But it looks good.
Also if you decide to buy, do yourself a favour and avoid the Microsoft store version. Big mistake.
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Performance good here, too, 60fps at most places though frames do slow down near large cities. It helped to lower Render Scale a bit (to 90 in my case), and Volumetric Clouds are performance intensive, best for me at Medium or High, not Ultra.
My computer specs (Core i5-9600K, 2070 Super, 32mb RAM).
Flight stream log over Rio de Janeiro earlier today.
Wonderful week!
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It seems like 32GB of RAM is a necessity for smooth performance. It seems 16GB is no longer enough.
There may still be room for some improvement from Asobo on this still. But it seems larger RAM amounts alleviate some of the issues.
An upgrade is in my future…
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