Like many of you I’ve been into msfs since 1998. So, I was waiting for this for a while.
But the installer is impossible. I wouldn’t mind having to wait for as many as 400 hours. But waiting for an in-game download for 40 hours with my GPU and CPU baking is not good.
So what happened. After 40 hours of download I paused and exited to play some DCS only to encounter some weird flashes on my screen. I don’t think that is unrelated to the 40 hours or in-game download time. I refunded it and now I’m thinking of getting the dvd version. But this needs to constantly have the dvd in the drive and anyway it won’t save me from future large updates. I might just wait to see what happens; I really hope that Microsoft comes up with a better solution.
I can’t help but think that the way they made such an incredible software only to mess with its distribution is unique in pc gaming history.
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Yeah but isn’t the download speed higher now? I can imagine most people have downloaded it now? It took me about half an hour. For it to take 40 hours your internet must be less than 5 mbit?
If my internet was that slow i would have bought the boxed version right away.
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Strange, i started downloading it the minute it was released and with my 250mbit net it took me about 90 minutes to download.
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I also managed to download it the minute it came out and it went well - downed it in 3 hours with my 100MBit speed.
I have the DVD version. I made an ISO of disc 1 and I’m able to play the game by keeping it mounted in a random drive 
It’s an extra step but I don’t mind, I wanted to have the boxed version anyway.
Strange, I downloaded at midnight on release day and by 6am it was done and dusted. I only have 60mb/s connection. Seems the issue may be at your end?
That’s very good to know! I thought there would be some protection from making an disk image. I might do that. Thank you!
Everyone else: I’m not complaining about the server’s speed. My speed is around 7mbit. This shouldn’t be a reason having to bake my graphic’s card downloading it. Please consider that not everyone in the world has access to high internet speed.
And for those who might say that I wouldn’t have much bandwidth to stream the earth while flying, I can assure you that 7mbps is enough, especially when using local disk cache.
You have to download 90 giga. I am too lazy to do the maths But you will need a lot of time for sure.
I remember downloading games like 5 go on similar speed, and usually it was starting the evening to get it ready on the morning. So 90 go… this is a challenge.
For the DVD, not sure were you are leaving, but I dont think they are available everywhere. For Europe, the publisher Aerosft is running out of stock.
Yep it works fine so far. I used ImgBurn to extract the ISO and I mount it with Deamon Tools.
You don’t even need to change the drive letter in a config file (like you used to back in the earlier gaming days).
I still use my good old clone drive here
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I wouldn’t expect a good experience downloading this over 7mbps. I am sure the installer is using GPU acceleration for laying out the textures. It is appropriate to do that. That is why you see so much GPU utilization. Both your CPU and GPU should be able to run hard for as long as that takes over 7mbps without damage.
If not, then you have bigger problems to worry about.
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No idea how long it took for me. Kicked it off downloading at midnight and came back in the morning.
I didn’t have much of a problem when I downloaded alpha in January. But the room temperature was 18-20 degrees. Now it is 30+ where I live. So, yes downloading the game is baking my computer, and I guess everyone’s computer of those who have slow internet speed and live in warm countries.
I’m not sure where you see the “appropriateness” of having a game downloading while it’s open using the computer on high performance… It’s plainly wrong both for the hardware and for the waste of energy. I have never encountered anything like this and although it may be how it is, it’s not “appropriate”.
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Mentioned this in another thread, but, basically, the distribution method was done to work around the MS Store encryption, and still provide us with add-ons. It’s basically Microsoft’s fault for continuing to use the MS Store for their products instead of just working closely with Steam.
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Took me about six hours on fiber optics. MS might be limiting output based on how many people are downloading the sim.
Took me a couple hours on 40mbps download - the reason being that I am playing the game through the Xbox Game Pass for PC ($5 a month) and you install the game through the Xbox app. Worked perfectly - maybe get the pass for a month until the installation process is smoother on the non-MS store version?
I’m giving it one more chance after this reinstall, and then I’m going to refund it, if it isn’t working better.
The fact that the devs are not releasing hotfixes makes me think that these issues will not be fixed, if ever. We can expect a release date for a patch next week, so god knows when that will be.
Overall this has been disappointing in the extreme. I should have known better than to get sucked in by the PR and the bloody youtubers who promoted this thing.
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Mine took a long time, but the thing that took the longest was not the “Download” of the files, but the Decompression of those files. I think caused many people to believe the downloader had frozen, as mine sat with the “Download progress bar” stuck at 4 GB from done, but it had a “Decompressing file…” message. And, looking at the directory there were ~56 GB of files it was slowly working through.
I could see it was still working because every once in a while it would go from decompressing “randomfilename1.001” to “randomfilename2.002” and the *.001 file would disappear from the directory.
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