98 points

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

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68 points

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.

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25 points

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.

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24 points

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.

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2 points

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

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3 points

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

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20 points

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

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8 points

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.

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23 points

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.

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9 points

Hey you! You with your logic and reasoning and reading the issue notes from developers. You aren’t a real gamer, get out of here with that! We’re here to dogpile on a new game here!

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3 points

From the point of view of a customer, the exact failure method is irrelevant.
Microsoft took a lot of money and wasn’t able to deliver what was promised in exchange.

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18 points

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

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17 points
*

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…

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15 points

✋ Hi, person here who bought 2020 but refuses to buy 2024 because they didn’t deliver on half their promises for 2020, including that it would be the last sim they sold.

Maybe they were suprised this many people actually signed up for their next level bullshit. 🤷‍♂️

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12 points

I bet the beancounters don’t like keeping excess capacity ready to go

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2 points

Scaling capacity up and down in real time should be Microsoft’s core business now.

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7 points

I’d say it’s more on how the developers setup their system to utilize (or not utilize) those dynamic capabilities.

The game devs not taking advantage of that properly should be on them. Put the blame where it belongs.Don’t let the devs off the hook just because you want to at least partially blame the MS cloud. Microsoft’s systems CAN handle dynamic loads when setup properly, we see it all the time.

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53 points

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.

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5 points

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.

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1 point

Wouldn’t that end up being hundreds of gigabytes per region file?

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12 points

For low res, no.

Hi res, sure. Make it optional, or let players download the region they like. Or just the airports with much lower res landscapes, etc etc.

Or just, let them have it all and make these choices. Memory is CHEAP nowadays. If you’re a flight sim enthusiast, a few terabytes for the map data is the least expensive part of your setup by far.

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4 points

Supposedly, the full map is measured in petabytes.

This is actually a perfectly reasonable use of streaming assets for full-resolution, since almost no players will ever experience even 1 percent of the map.

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4 points

Precisely this – I don’t remember anyone complaining that the FS2020 install size was too large, even if its install size was the butt of a few good-natured jokes. They’ve solved a problem that didn’t exist and in doing so have turned FS into an always online internet-connected live service instead of a game. I’m not touching this game with a 40 foot aileron until an offline mode of some quality exists.

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1 point

My internet service in Silicon Valley charges like $1/GB above 1TB of usage per month :(

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17 points
*

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.

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2 points

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

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23 points

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.

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15 points

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.

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3 points

They shouldn‘t have added it to GamePass on launch day but wait a few weeks or even months to stretch out the server load.

I bet there are tons of causal and first time players that are already subscribed to gamepass that wanted to try out MSFS24 just because they have access to it. Now those people are pissed off even though they would have waited longer to get a better experience.

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1 point

I’m sure the Microsoft executive that made the decision is absolutely drenched in the “Azure scales infinitely if you give Microsoft more money” kool-ade.

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6 points

Just like Windows versions.

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2 points
*

I heard that you can’t even fly a pterodactyl in it.

Pathetic

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