In the wake of the highly anticipated launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, players have found themselves navigating turbulent skies. A wave of discontent has swept through the community, leading to thousands of reviews that express frustration over the game’s performance issues, which many users describe as rendering it nearly unplayable.
Challenges and Responses from Leadership
Jorg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, alongside Sebastian Wloch, CEO and co-founder of Asobo, took the time to address these concerns directly. Neumann expressed their excitement about the launch, stating, “We have been so excited for this day and to finally share Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 with you. We are really proud of what we’ve accomplished with the sim, with all of our partners. We feel like we’ve done something really great for the hobby.” However, he acknowledged the overwhelming demand that exceeded their expectations, leading to significant infrastructure challenges.
Currently, the game holds a 24% rating, predominantly negative, with players voicing complaints about various issues, including missing aircraft, cumbersome controls, and frequent disconnections mid-flight. One user lamented, “I cannot recommend this game to anyone right now,” highlighting the frustrations with streaming default aircraft and the lengthy loading times for textures, which often leave cockpit buttons devoid of text until they are fully downloaded.
Another prevalent issue has been the game’s tendency to freeze at 97% during startup, resulting in crashes that force players to restart. Wloch elaborated on the technical difficulties, explaining, “We’ve been struggling for a few hours with our services. At the very beginning, when players start, they’re asking a server for some data, and that server is going to catch it in a database. It’s a very big database, and there’s a cache, and that cache is currently getting saturated.”
Despite thorough testing that simulated up to 200,000 users, the actual influx of players has overwhelmed their systems. Wloch noted, “We’ve tried to restart the services, and we’ve taken measures to try and throttle the number of people who can enter at the same time.” Although initial adjustments appeared to improve the situation temporarily, the cache ultimately collapsed again, leading to ongoing troubleshooting efforts.
Unlike its predecessors, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 relies on cloud streaming for its assets, significantly reducing the game’s size to approximately 50GB and lowering some PC requirements. However, this shift has introduced new instability, as the constant streaming struggles to keep pace with the influx of players. Wloch explained, “When the server fails, it restarts, it retries and retries, which creates an extremely long initial loading that is not supposed to be that long.” This leads to frustrating experiences, such as freezing at 97% or entering the game with incomplete content.
Fortunately, there are signs of improvement, as reports indicate that the queue screen has disappeared, allowing more players to access Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 without delay. An admin on the game’s Discord confirmed this positive development late last night.
In a show of transparency, Neumann offered an apology to the community, stating, “We’re really sorry. We want to apologise. We made this video because we’re always here, and we want to be as transparent and as honest as possible. So we have some problems today, the team is on it and then we will keep going.” The commitment to resolving these issues reflects the developers’ dedication to enhancing the player experience and restoring faith in the beloved franchise.
