Jorg, Sebastian, and Jayne from the Microsoft Flight Simulator team jumped onto a video tonight to tell us what the status is on the sim and what some of the troubles are. As many of you know, MSFS 2024 launched this morning and the process getting started has been anything but smooth. Here’s the latest!

High traffic, server issue causes rocky launch

The Microsoft and Asobo teams jumped onto a video late in the day to provide an update on how things are going. After a quick introduction, Jorg Neumann, the Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator started in on a bit of what happened. Here’s part of what he said:

We knew the excitement was high for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 but frankly we completely underestimated how high and it really has overwhelmed our infrastructure.

Jorg Neumann

Sebastian Wloch, Asobo CEO & Co-Founder, was next up and he went into a little bit more detail talking about their caching server setup running a large database. The system was tested during the tech alpha and was able to handle 200,000 people just fine but clearly the huge increase in scale has pushed the system over the top.

He reports that they limited access for a short while, recovered the system, tried to increase access again and that didn’t go according to plan.

I’ve been on some tech roll outs that went like this and I feel for them. There’s always an element of chaos when you unleash something like this and even having the backing of Azure web services is clearly not enough to handle all that’s coming at them. Such is the excitement for this sim. It’s great to see on one hand but obviously a huge issue on the other.

The video was paired with the following statement on the MSFS website:

We have worked hard with our partners, including Asobo and others, to bring you an amazing sim experience. The excitement for the sim today has been overwhelming, but we encountered an issue with one of our services handling the new systems in the game like career mode and various missions. The server responsible for handling data requests got overloaded, causing delays and errors.

As a result, players are experiencing long loading times and missing content like aircraft. We have solved the issues and are now bringing players in at a steady pace. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We will keep you updated on our social channels, forums, and website. Thank you very much for all your feedback and support.

Hopefully this all gets sorted out soon!


21 responses to “Asobo and Microsoft provide an update on the status of the new sim”

  1. For a game that will be streaming all content, this is as bad as it gets. The Steam rating will never recover.

    Watching streamers spending 6 hours and still not getting it, just wow. Worst release day, ever.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. I was really looking forward to this! I got maybe like 20 minutes of flying time, until I started messing around with VR and getting VRAM leaks.

    The rest of the day was spent looking at a Gray Screen “too many users are trying to connect at the same time”

    it’s wonderful to spend $80 on a game and not being able to play it.

    Crickets from Microsoft/Asobo.

    Seems like a BAD year for flight simming all around, with the community being frustrated with DCS drama, Il2, and now MSFS. Hate to be a debbie downer, but we can’t catch a break, jeez.

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    1. Definitely a frustrating day for everyone involved. I didn’t get to do anything with it until today and there’s still quite a bit of glitchy behaviour going on. I think it’ll take a while to sort out.

      To be fair, Microsoft was updating about every two hours on their social platforms and perhaps even more frequently on Discord and the forums. Plus this video that I shared. It wasn’t entirely crickets. The updates have been coming in through today though I haven’t had a chance to properly absorb and report just yet.

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    2. Oh and you’re right about the community not catching a break. It’s been rough. I’ve seen it!

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    3. If you’re invested into the news cycle of flight simming, it seems like a bad year.

      But we have the best software already out including 3rd party content and the best sims ever made working as of this moment.

      Perspective is important.

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  3. “we’re so surprised” doesn’t quite cut it when they had rough estimations of potential users on day one (pre-orders and wishlists). Not to mention all the content that is lacking or the ridiculous 2-3 hour shader compilation times that users are reporting.

    Yet another game released too early to make stock holders happy.

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  4. I am still satisfied with MSFS2020. The career mode doesn’t interest me atm. The improved graphics are not clear if they come with a performance hit. The heaving streaming model has me wondering. So I have been waiting for the dust to settle anyway. Ofc, I will eventually get 2024, but I am in no hurry.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Nothing wrong with sticking with MSFS 2020. It’s going to be a great experience for quite a long time!

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  5. Managed to get in and take a quick flight in the C172 G1K.

    Only had about 10 mins to fly around real quick. Take off and landing felt very much like v2020 (unsurprisingly). Cut through the grass between the runway and apron – definitely a bumpy experience!

    Seemed well behaved and looks promising – Can’t wait to give it more time and see how quickly I can switch over to it from v2020!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s definitely promising despite the bumpy start. It’ll get sorted out eventually and I think it’ll be great… but its also not quite where I thought it’d be at launch. More to experience!

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  6. Defintely waiting – and glad I waited – before jumping into this one. Good time to fly around the Kola map in DCS. That works just fine. 🙂

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    1. I will also note that VR looks pretty bad, it may be no optimized at this point at all. I compared to FS2020 and there it looks way better at the moment.

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      1. I’m not a VR user so I’m not sure from personal experience but I’ve heard varying comments on that. Some positive, others negative. Some folks reporting that it runs better than 2020. Seems to be a mixed bag but hopefully you can get yours to run better!

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    2. Yes, there are lots of other good options available right now! MSFS 2020 is still running great too. I’ve got 2024 up and running tonight but I’ve got a lot of re-configuring to do before I can get myself going.

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  7. “High traffic, server issue causes rocky launch” What a surprise…

    What I don’t understand is why a company like Microsoft couldn’t foresee this, especially given the way the new simulator is structured, with almost all the content served via streaming. I had a feeling that something like this would happen, which is why I haven’t bought it yet. I will do so when all this disaster is over. Anyway, big companies don’t learn.

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    1. I’ve been on a few IT roll outs and even with the best testing tools, simulated load testing, and robust server and network architecture… nothing quite seems to compare to actually having the users all join in at once. Plus… I think and it sounds like they underestimated the day one interest.

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  8. looks like a really cool new sim – been waiting for weeks to play it. After all that waiting game is in a introduction loop and stuck at 97% loading!

    …. the wait continues.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Seems to have partially recovered based on the most recent comments. Hopefully it was working for you!

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  9. David Robert Cunningham Avatar
    David Robert Cunningham

    if testing with 200,000 users was good how many of us actually tried at the start? Seems fine now. If they staged it no one would happy. Seems MS cannot win.

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    1. It’s mostly a no-win scenario but I do think this went further off the rails than anyone had expected (or hoped for). I’m guessing their servers were hit with millions of connections… MSFS 2020 grew to quite a big fan base.

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  10. Even after the second day, still mostly unusable for most, very long delays launching, very little if almost no streaming of scenery. This needs to be pulled and a redesign started. I don’t think it’s going to get much better unless most just give up and leave it alone.

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