I’ll be honest because I thought that Microsoft had this one in the bag but it seems that the demand has outstripped the supply as the servers that run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 have buckled under demand for the new sim. Some users are in while others are met with various screens forcing them to wait it out. Here’s how it’s going so far!

The servers are the limit

Server loading times
byu/xavier1228 inMicrosoftFlightSim

I think most of us had hoped to see a smooth launch to Microsoft’s newest entry into the Flight Simulator series, however, we’re having shades of MSFS 2020 as the servers are struggling to respond to the huge demand for the new sim.

Microsoft are aware of the problems and have posted this on most of their social media channels in the last couple of hours.

We are aware of user reports of long initial loading times into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. With so many users initializing the sim concurrently, we have a large number of server requests. We are working to help resolve the issues as soon as possible. For users whose initial load is past 90% and no longer progressing, we recommend a reboot. Otherwise we advise waiting to allow the loading to proceed as normal.

Microsoft Flight Simulator team

Others who were able to get into the sim have been facing other challenges such as missing aircraft. At least one user reported that they had only two or three out of their total collection.

We are aware of reports of aircraft missing from the My Library and Aircraft Select screens in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This issue is related to the server issues we are currently working to resolve. Please stay tuned for further updates.

Microsoft Flight Simulator team

Still others were able to get through all of that but have been running into other issues. How many of them are related to the unreliable servers under load or have run into some other issue is currently unclear.

Microsoft have also posted a document with a summary of top known issues. Some of those issues include crashes on Xbox in high load environments while others are related to compatibility with previously released products. Third party developers are generally telling us that we should not expect everything to work on day one. Most of them seem enthusiastic about the long term experience but right at the moment there are going to be some issues. Microsoft report that 4,000 items have been verified by authors out of 7,790 add-ons currently in the marketplace. I expect that number will rise quickly but not until the initial launch day issues are sorted out.

Keeping calm and carrying on

A life time of playing sim games has lead me to not tend to worry about these sorts of early issues. Most sims are extremely complex pieces of software asking more from our systems than most games ever will and we’re a demanding group asking for even more. MSFS 2020 launched with similar issues and those issues were eventually solved.

Those of you hoping to get some new flying experiences on day one may be disappointed, I know I am too, but we’ll get through it all. My sim got stuck at 97%, like many of you, and was unable to complete the install and start-up process. The trailer playing behind the installer was beautiful but it would have been great to get through to the main menu screen.

Meanwhile, MSFS 2020 servers are unaffected and the legacy sim is working brilliantly. One day soon, I’ll be switching over to 2024 and probably won’t spend a lot of time looking back. But on a day like today, its good to wait it out and we’ll get to the good stuff in time.