“An awful launch experience,” is how Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, Jorg Neumann, described the situation surrounding the November 19 release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This comes from the beginning of the recently-published December Developer Stream, clocking in at nearly an hour-and-a-half long.
This first Dev Stream since the sim’s launch was dedicated to outlining where Asobo is at right now and what its short and long-term plans are for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 going into next year. In short, there are a lot of updates planned and even some freebies will be coming to players to “make good” for the sim’s rocky beginning.
Patching things up
Here are the highlights from the stream:
- “Substantial” Patch 3 coming either December 10 or 12
- Two major Sim Updates coming in 2025, with two unnamed “surprises” also planned for 2025
- Marketplace launch delayed until “early 2025”
- Four free planes to be given to all players to “make good” for the poor launch
- Brazil World Update pushed to January/February 2025
- Asobo in partnership with Embraer
Two relatively small patches have already been released for the new sim. A third, “pretty substantial” patch, will be rolled out on either December 10 or December 12. Beyond this, two major Sim Updates are planned for Q1 2025 and Q2 2025.
Neumann explained that with the new content deployment system that the sim uses, updates to various components can be rolled out more frequently on the server side. This includes Career Mode updates and aircraft updates. Thus, players will get content refreshes and fixes even outside of major Sim Updates. This is different from the way MSFS 2020 handled things, which required an entire sim client update each time something core to the sim was changed.
From the cloud, to you
During a Q&A portion of the stream, Sebastian Wloch (Asobo CEO,) reiterated why MSFS 2024 makes use of cloud streaming far more so than its predecessor. In short, this was done due to the immense amount of data that makes up the sim’s backend.
In its current state, MSFS 2020 alone is well over a terabyte, and that’s excluding some packages. This time, Asobo deemed it to be essential to stream major chunks of data as needed to each player. Otherwise, players would experience significant download times and require immense amount of disk space.
The launch day catastrophe represented a collapse in this content delivery system, due to the amount of simultaneous requests for data from different players. The pipeline has been optimised, and the core hiccups have been rectified. But, work continues on fixing other shortcomings, like low quality of terrain textures and LOD pop-in.
Wloch recommends players to increase the size of their rolling cache in their sim data settings (such as to 128GB) in order to help mitigate bandwidth issues. The ability to outright download content like airports and aircraft is coming in Patch 3.
For Xbox players, the devs are working on a fix to optimize RAM usage in order to mitigate the loading issues that have been present for some players.
Going to market
“It’s not going to take a long time, but it’s going to take a little bit of time” was the answer that Neumann provided in reference to the Marketplace for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. An integral feature of the sim, it was not available at launch due to ongoing testing of products in the backend. Both Asobo and even Microsoft were enabling packages, but eventually conflicts for players began to arise.
Last week, the decision was made to disable all non-aircraft products until a fix is discovered. Neumann has now confirmed that the Marketplace has been further delayed until sometime in “early 2025” to allow for more testing.
Squashing bugs and hearing wishes
Asobo has compiled a list of different issues and bugs that have been submitted from the community. Some issues have the same root problem and Asobo is investigating them all.
The developers encourage users to make use of the official forums to highlight their issues and breakdown their technical specs and instances of encountering a bug in order for the devs to recreate the problem.
The bugs highlighted above are just 20 of the issues reported so far. There are many more, and Asobo is committed to combing through them all.
The top bug, referring to “unrealistic and over-exaggerated airport/night lighting” is being partially fixed in Patch 3. Asobo is still toying around with how to properly fix it, such as implementing a global texture for night lighting.
Another issue is that of Live Weather not being separate from the date selected. The current data collection system is being modified to allow users to fine-tune their weather settings more.
Beyond bugs, the community has been submitting suggestions for features/changes that it would like to see implemented. The devs also took the opportunity to address some of the entries.
The top request is that of unencrypting default aircraft and offering full downloadability. The team is working on doing the first half, and the last half is coming soon.
As for making cloud streaming optional, the devs explained that it’s “just not feasible” to eliminate the feature entirely. So far, the sim consists of over 3 petabytes (3000TB, in other words) of world data. Larger countries with more complex world data would be several hundred gigs or more to download. The streaming functionality is necessary in order to facilitate the infrastructure that’s been built.
As Wloch mentions, MSFS 2020 was built differently, so the experience with MSFS 2024 has been and will continue to be different from its predecessor. His recommendation, as mentioned earlier, is for players to increase the size of their rolling cache and that way, the sim will be forced to temporarily download the area that you’re flying in, helping mitigate any streaming issues.
Neumann did take a moment to address the wishes for more recent satellite imagery and even the importing of Google map data. He immediately squashed any hopes for Google map data, as that is a “different company” and there’s no agreement between it and Asobo.
As for Bing, its partners are working consistently to refresh the imagery, but some areas are prioritised more than others. Asobo is not responsible for what areas get prioritised, but is “thankful” to have access to the data as it could not afford to do so otherwise. Neumann also mentioned that downloading map data is tricky because of the agreements between Asobo, Bing and Bing’s partners. This explains why the map data is distributed in the sim the way it is.
Fun with flight planning
Asobo invited Matt Nischan from Working Title to show off the improved flight charts and flight planning tools that have been implemented into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
Nischan highlighted the use of the web-based flight planning client for the sim, which actually launched alongside the sim back in November.
Nischan mentioned that there have been seven updates made to the backend of the planner since launch. More improvements and features are coming, such as real world routes and more weather layers.
Working Title has been in cooperation with Asobo for quite some time now. It brought a lot of major avionics improvements to MSFS 2020, and its work is now even more comprehensive here in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
Headed south and making good with the community
World Update 19 was supposed to be released this month, but it has been pushed back to either January or February 2025. The delay is due to the ongoing work on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
The new world update will be composed of not just the massive country of Brazil, but also the smaller nations of Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana will all be improved in this update. As for the rest of 2025, there will be three City Updates and four World Updates. Seven Local Legend aircraft are planned, and four Famous Flyers.
Finally, four Sim Updates are on their way, with two unnamed “surprises” nested under the same category. With that in mind, they could end up being similar to the Red Bull Air Races expansion released a few years ago for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Embraer, a premier aircraft manufacturer that’s based in Brazil, now has an agreement with Asobo to bring over some of its planes to the simulator. Neumann enthusiastically announced this, but did not specify exactly what those planes will be.
He then pivoted to once again apologising for the poor launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, while also promising the release of four different aircraft that will be part of the ‘make good’ series.
These four aircraft will be freely distributed to all players. The first is the Cessna 185F bush plane, developed by Carenado. The second is the Brazilian CAP-4 Paulistinha, another vintage single-engine bush plane. This one is handled by iniBuilds. The remaining two selections for the make good collection are yet to be determined.
“We will do better”
Neumann, Wloch and Bossard (Executive Producer at Asobo) all gave their final remarks at the end of the presentation. They reiterated Asobo’s commitment to improving the sim, squashing the bugs and delivering a good product.
The road ahead for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is a long one. Patch 3 is set to be very significant and should hopefully spruce up a good chunk of the most aggressive issues currently facing the sim. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the Marketplace is released.
Overall, work is being done, and the community is being heard. Let’s just hope it’s not too long before the majority of players start truly enjoying their time.
