Extremely slow download speeds in content manager

Bug Reporting Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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407

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes. Each download (initial sim installation as well as downloads from the marketplace) are very slow, sitting mostly around 2 Mbps.

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

Whenever the download of a particular package starts (e. g. package_000x) the download speed indication would show 2 Mbps for several minutes. After that time the download speed would jump up to 200-300 Mbps and continues to download that package. After the package package_000x was successfully downloaded and the package manager gets to the next one, the download speed indicator would show “please wait …” for a very brief time and then starts to download package_000(x+1). The download speed again shows around 2 Mbps for several minutes.
Rinse and repeat for each package_000(x+n) until done.
Downloading the whole sim for the first time took me around 24 hours. I get high download speed only each couple minutes for one package at a time. Outside of that time window the download speed practically drops to zero.

2 Likes
412

Downloading WUs with 2.50 Mbits/s. Goes up to 200 sometimes but doesn’t stay there long. Location Germany

1 Like
417

Same here in France, tried on multiple ISP and even on my Unlimited 5G.
2-3 Mbits/s max dl speed from content manager.

Microsoft and Asobo you really need to fix this or at least address the community and let us know when it will be fixed.

4 Likes
420

Well I live in the SW of France (with fiber) and I can tell you it is a problem. So I dont understand how it works perfectly for them.

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422

My core download happened at around 6 Mbits/s. While Steam itself is able to use the whole 100 Mbits/s for downloads. In the past (year 2020 up to 2022) FS2020 used more or less full speed. I didnt play in 2023 so I dont know when it stopped delivering the data fast.

Anecdotic Update: This here seemed to halp me: How to improve slow download speed – Microsoft Flight Simulator Support (zendesk.com)

Especially this: DISABLE AUTOTUNING LEVEL

Update: The speed is alternating between very slow (2 Mbits/s) and relatively fast (50 Mbits/s) now. A bit better than before, but nowwhere near than it was in 2020/20201.

1 Like
423

I’ve not seen any solid evidence that adjusting that setting makes any difference, but maybe it does in certain scenarios. But I certainly wouldn’t suggest it’s anything more than something to try, and if it fails then you try something else.

To be fair that article, and another about low bandwidth affecting streaming scenery are just a list of things to try, which is the kind of article that I interpret as the author not knowing what the problem is, or does and it’s not politic to admit it.

None of my kit is old, and about as cutting edge as the UK has at the moment, and I have the issue, and cannot replicate that issue with any other service, benchmark or DRM shopfront.

4 Likes
424

:wave: Thank you for using the Bug section, using templates provided will greatly help the team reproducing the issue and ease the process of fixing it.

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

no

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons? If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the Community Support section.

new installation

Brief description of the issue:

I‘m aware that this is a recurring topic. The download speed is hilariously slow. I have a Giganet, I usually download at up to 850MBit/s and more, depending on the server. But in MSFS the downloads are as slow as 2 MBit/s!!! I‘m currently in the process of a completely new installation due to a broken mainboard and MSFS itself took the whole night and morning to download. Now I need to download another ~150GB in the content manger. In other games via Steam or other download sources I tend to calculate 100GB per hour as a very rough estimation and I‘m usually done faster. Here it will take the whole day. That‘s an absolute nogo. This is Microsoft, a multi billion dollar enterprise! Not okay.

Edit: The whole download (sim + world updates, I don’t own any further marketplace aircraft or scenery) took almost 2 days and happened at 2-5MBit/s.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

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PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

ookla speedtest down 940Mbps. I‘m located in Germany.

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

it‘s been goong on for a while.

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

2 Likes
430

Trying to download the Caribbean World Update. Getting 1 to 1.5 Mbps download speed. Line speed is 500Mbps. This problem did not occur in the past.

431

What a surprise. My base sim update downloaded at ~50-150 Mbits/s now the download of the carribean scenery in the marketplace is at ~1-2 Mbits/s. Im so fed up with this. No news at all on a resolution from MS or Asobo.

1 Like
432

Hello @sthackrey,

The issue of slow download speeds was directly addressed by Martial during yesterday’s Developer Livestream. You can watch the video here (relevant section about download speeds starts at 18:17).

Thanks,
MSFS Team

2 Likes
433

sim’s great, file hosting has never been great but currently its just insufferable / prevents accessibility.

434

“Working on it” is not a resolution unfortunately. It was reported as a problem such a long time ago and its still not fixed. I am surprised it is causing so many issues when other platforms dont have this problem. I hope they get it fixed soon. It is incredibly frustrating in this day and age. I have never seen such low download speeds since I was a teenager back in the 90s hahah.

7 Likes
435

To be fair, while the content manager said it’s downloading at 2mbit/s most of the time the actual download must be faster.

Downloading the 11 GB of the World Update took about two hours for me, while it only would have managed to get 1.8 GB had it really been that slow the whole time. The real download rate was probable an average of 12 - 14 Mbit/s. Still just a fraction of my modest bandwidth, but not as bad as it looked.

1 Like
436

11 hours. 100mbit.

I think this is… annoying.`..?

1 Like
437

Very slow, 2 Mbps speed. Unfair.

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438

What bothers me is that obviously Asobo cannot reproduce the problem all the time. How difficult can it be that one of the Asobo folks uses his XBox (or PC) at his home or visit an (outside of Asobo) friend and be able to see the issue all the time and repeatable?
It’s a bit like other problems with FS2020 and specifically XBox that they seem not to able to see repeatedly and reproducible. They do not seem to be able to set somebody up outside the Asobo “guarded sphere” who could demo most of the existing bugs and shortcomings with ease.

6 Likes
439

I’m downloading now the Caribbean world update at 2 Mbits/s.

On same time a speedtest showing another result (2300 Mbps)

speedtest
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441

in generally I would say yes to that because the in-game downloader computes also the de-compressing time as “download-speed” ( which is 0 then ) and so the avg speed goes down, but unfortunality thats not the case what happens here for the bug report.

Since weeks ( may months ) is downloading of patches and also new bought add-ons like a pain. The avg. is , as many users here reported in range of 2-3mbit. Thats seems independent of day-time, routers re-connect, etc. . Its also very strange that all users report the same “max range” , because in case of any network limitations I would expect a range from 0 to max mbit.. But thats not realy the case, the range is “2-3” OR “max”. The only exception is that I’ve see in some hours of downloading with 2-3mbit some short spikes in which the download goes to max speed ( in my case currently 250mbit ) for may be 15-30 seconds. And thats it… May be it depends on the how the files to download are distributed on the servers.

hours and hours 2..3mbit

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rare short time spikes

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For me is it more a bug-report against that herotic ms-platforms, and not against the game itself ( whats us not helps :wink: ). The category ( edit: more exact the tag ) in forum is “ms-store”, but I as a “Steam” user, are affected in same way because the content will in each case downloaded from the ms platforms.

2 Likes
442

The number shown in the content manager is pretty accurate, although it shows an average from the past 10-20 seconds. So when you see the speed gradually accelerating or decelerating, in reality it’s usually an almost instant change.

But while the file download sits at 2-3 Mb for most of the time, it accelerates after a while to full bandwidth, and that is when most data gets downloaded. Unfortunately with each new file the slow cycle repeats.

443

Here it starts every package at around 200MBit/s and after a few seconds it will throttle down to about 2MBit/s. Once the end of the current package is reached it throttles back up to almost 400MBit/s. So the overall time might not be true to the 2 MBit/s but this throttling is definitely a bug on either end, sim or server.