Flight Simulator 2024 trades huge install size for high bandwidth usage – up to 81GB per hour

[Daniel Sims]

WTF?! Offloading most game assets to the cloud is one of Asobo Studio's most interesting decisions regarding the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. However, early testing has revealed the dramatic effect that cloud streaming has on internet bandwidth usage. Some users might debate whether the method is preferable to downloading everything at once.

Videos from the technical alpha for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 have revealed occasionally extreme internet bandwidth usage. Developer Asobo Studio previously confirmed that the game's cloud-based system would require more bandwidth than its 2020 predecessor, but test results far exceeded the upcoming game's official system requirements.

One video shows bandwidth usage bouncing between roughly 20Mbps and 180Mbps, while the spec sheet recommends that players have internet connections capable of at least 100Mbps. The game could theoretically stream up to 81GB per hour unless additional optimization occurs before launch on November 19.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 streams assets according to each player's location in the game's 1:1 scale procedurally generated recreation of Earth to avoid the last game's extreme storage requirements. The 2020 edition sometimes requires up to 200GB of storage space, and purchasing all available DLC could add up to 2TB.

Making matters worse, the game only downloads updates after booting. Without the automatic backgrounds that most modern games use, users must often download patches totaling dozens of gigabytes as they begin playing. In stark contrast, the upcoming game's initial download is only 30GB and the storage requirement is just 50GB.

Although cloud streaming will shorten startup times, bandwidth usage approaching 200Mbps could negatively affect gameplay for those living in areas with slow internet options or data caps. Furthermore, playing the game over Xbox Cloud Gaming requires only 20Mbps, and Microsoft might unlock the ability to stream every game from a user's library before Flight Simulator 2024's launch. While Flight Simulator doesn't support Nvidia's GeForce NOW, that streaming service's highest subscription tier requires only 40Mbps.

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Changing the graphics settings will likely affect bandwidth usage, but it remains unclear by how much, judging from the technical alpha video. The demo showcases two drastically different locations with all graphics set to ultra except for Level of Detail (LOD), which determines the distance at which objects are loaded.

Flying over the densely populated New York City with LOD set to 400 would presumably consume far more bandwidth than the comparatively barren Grand Canyon with LOD at 200. However, both areas at both LOD levels exhibit roughly the same variance.

Perhaps other graphics settings, like texture resolution, might have a bigger effect. The final game might also include an optional bandwidth cap, and Asobo still has time for further optimization.

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Flight Simulator 2024 trades huge install size for high bandwidth usage – up to 81GB per hour

 

[yRaz]

2TB for the full game? Look, I know a couple guys who have simulator rigs, one for racing and one who likes trucking simulator. The cost of a 2TB drive for what these guys spend to have their simulator experience is a drop in the bucket.

Not saying that's for everyone, but let's keep in mind that this is a SIMULATOR not a GAME.

 

[gigantor21]

I’d much rather download everything in one shot than redownload everything over and over every time I play.

Running it over the cloud with this much data seems like a terrible idea.

 

[JohnRambo4]

Wish there was a demo like the old days.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

I’d much rather download everything in one shot than redownload everything over and over every time I play.

Running it over the cloud with this much data seems like a terrible idea.

Are you sure you have the facts straight? Maybe, this is called 'lazy downloading' (hey, can I get credit for coining a new phrase)? In other words, you buy a new game/software that is 2TB but because only so much data is needing to actually start playing, the game/software core is downloaded first (let's say it's 50-100GB) and then you get the rest in chunks on an "as needed" basis. For example, when you fly into new cities/states. And since planes turn much slower than cars the software could possibly, reasonably predict which cities/states you are going to need based upon your current tracjectory and begin downloading those chunks. But this sure as hell doesn't mean you download the same chunks everytime you play. Once you have explored a specific city/state/country that chunk should remain on your hard disk for life.

Of course, I can see somebody else complaining about a single game/software consuming 2TB of space. So, the developers should you allow you to delete chunks after you have explored them as well. Maybe manually or by an expiration that is configurable by the user.

So, I'm not really sure why you used the phrase 'redownload'. I seriously doubt it's that.

They could release this on 10 BD-R BDXL optical media discs. And everybody thought optical media was dead. Glad I still have (and believe in mine).

 

[kiwigraeme]

What to people expect flying is an expensive resource intense hobby

 

[ThomasTECH]

I love MS Flight Simulator!!!!!!!! However; the simulator in 2020 already made me want to rename the game to BREAKMYGPU.exe I can't even afford a machine now that both my 3k+ desktop and 3k+ laptop are not able to run the game GPU overload, RIP my 3k desktop after I put in a better GPU with more cooling; power surge broke the proprietary motherboard and CPU, now dell says there is no replacement options for the motherboard

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I know we are switching our simulators to X plane after MSFS proved to be an unstable mess. They can keep their fiber cracking download requirements.

 

[Norsiiii]

I’d much rather download everything in one shot than redownload everything over and over every time I play.

Running it over the cloud with this much data seems like a terrible idea.

And that's great, except that the sim/game already needs to use a huge amount of streaming regardless of what assets are locally stored, since all of the photogrammetry for the entire world adds up to over 2 PB of data. Good luck downloading all of that in one shot.

 

[aviator1015]

And that's great, except that the sim/game already needs to use a huge amount of streaming regardless of what assets are locally stored, since all of the photogrammetry for the entire world adds up to over 2 PB of data. Good luck downloading all of that in one shot.

It's called, wait for it - let us download what we want, when we want, how we want. Not everyone has the ability or more importantly the want to download up to this much data per hour.