I’m frustrated (to say the least) too. Flight sims are my hobby for many years now, lots of time, effort and money invested. My choice to buy MSFS was largely determined by the availability of global satellite imagery together with all the other graphical improvements. The landclass and vector scenery I have in my other sims are better than that used in MSFS so without the satellite imagery it loses a lot of appeal.
The visuals are such a big part of the sell for MSFS I would have thought that problems like this should be important to them. As you say just some feedback that this is noted and being looked at would help.
I FIXED MY MISSING SATELLITE PROBLEM but i’m not sure which step did it (and I went to great lengths). I did 3 steps at once, any one of them could have solved it.
I created a new xbox live account from a new email address to use in game and in xbox live (tykey6, i was using FlatFern8628955 - i posted above from this account).
I re installed Windows.
I was on the steam version of MSFS, but i bought an xbox games pass for 1 month for £1 and i’m using that version, Standard Edition, now for up to 1 month, then i’ll cancel and use my steam version as its the Premium Deluxe Edition(hope the problem doesnt happen again).
I suspect reinstalling windows did it but i cant be sure. Reinstalling the steam version of the game without reinstalling windows did nothing.
Synchronized time settings
Logged out of and uninstalled Xbox App
Rebooted
Reinstalled Xbox App and logged in
Started MSFS while Xbox App was still running
Satellite data appeared immediately.
I have done these exact steps before several days ago and it didn’t work then, but yesterday it worked and the sim is still working today, so far.
I’ve tried the steps as mentioned by @NeutrinoSunset Unfortunately no result within my flight sim.
See screenshot below.
steps taken:
Synchronized time settings
Logged out of and uninstalled Xbox App
Rebooted
Reinstalled Xbox App and logged in
Started MSFS while Xbox App was still running
Satellite data appeared immediately.
Bing Data World Graphics off
Photgrammetry off
Delete Rolling cash file
Set new rolling cash file
Turned all Bing Data world graphics on & Photgrammetry
Rebooted and started sim with a empty community folder.
Do you have the Xbox Companion App installed? If so I suggest you delete that as it isn’t needed and could cause problems, same goes for the Xbox Game Bar.
I would suggest you just disable the cache and leave it disabled until you get the satellite imagery working. There is no point having it enabled if you aren’t getting any imagery and it’s just one more thing that could cause a problem.
I would also suggest you check your installation folder for out of date cache files. In the directory that contained my Packages directory I found a MANUALCACHE.CCC file that was 100Gig in size and months old, despite having deleted all manual cache from within the game months ago. I don’t know whether deleting that helped at all, but it can’t hurt to tidy up one more thing that could be a source of problems.
Satellite data started working for me again yesterday after being broken for nearly a week. I didn’t use the sim over the weekend but it does seem to have been fixed sometime during that period. After seeing the latest post I checked just now and it’s still ok for me.
Looking through previous forum posts over the last year it seems this problem does appear from time to time, for varying periods. It has to be problems with the MS server infrastructure as people have tried all sorts of fixes at their end, including complete re-installs (even Windows!) with little effect. The only things I would recommend are cycling the online feature settings, clearing (deleting) any cache, and signing out and back in to Xbox services. I use the Steam version so don’t use the Xbox app, just need to be signed-in to my MS account.
The default scenery that is displayed when on-line isn’t available is basic landclass, textures and vector data which are part of the base sim installed on your PC i.e. the off-line fallback. It’s actually better than FSX and at least comparable to 3rd party products for other sims although the textures aren’t as good IMO (I know as I’ve been spending money on such things for years!)
I raised a support ticket for this but got no response. It would be interesting to know where people are based when they see this issue too - I’m in the UK. My guess is it is localised to some extent as the server infrastructure will be distributed and not everyone has issues at the same time.
After 4 days of no problems, started the game this evening, no satellite data in the World Map.
Loaded into Popham, no Bing textures in game.
Flew around for 3 minutes, CTD.
I’ve been flying around Popham exclusively for the last few days, so the scenery in this area should be cached anyway. Even if the satellite data isn’t being retrieved from online why isn’t cached data being used?
Went to config switched all data settings on and off and restarted. No change.
Switched off all data, deleted the rolling cache, renabled data and readded an 8GB rolling cache and restarted. No change.
Signed out of Xbox App, uninstalled, rebooted. Loaded MSFS, no change.
Reinstalled XBox App and logged in, loaded MSFS, no change.
During all this time since deleting the rolling cache my Current Data Consumption has gone up 500MB just by panning and zooming in the World Map. The World Map tiles also load in slower than the Bing satellite data does (when it’s working).
It seems pretty clear to me the map server is serving default land class tiles while I’m logged in with a valid user.
Only a year since the game was released, I wonder how long it will be before it is playable. At this rate I’ll be playing a fully fixed Cyberpunk 2077 before I’m reliably playing MSFS.
Yep, here we go again. Was ok yesterday but I just tried to start a flight and noticed the Bing map data was missing, replaced with the default landclass and textures. I’m using the Steam version and don’t have the XBox app so I just log out and back in to my MS XBox account. Also cleared the rolling cache. No effect.
I’ve noticed the same as you - the World Map is slow to load and displays some Bing Map satellite tiles but as you zoom in they eventually get replaced by default textures. And like you I can see that data is being streamed as my data consumption goes up and data is being passed over my ethernet connection. Nothing else has changed on my side so this must be a server problem of some kind.
I’m also in the UK but the same applies anywhere else I try.
I’m having the same problem as robmwfly is describing. The world map shows on the world map/start flight screen but takes longer to load and just shows default tiles when you zoom in. In-game no satellite data even in an area where I frequently fly and is probably cached by the sim. I tried switching servers by clicking on my profile picture on the welcome screen that did nothing.
It has been working well for the last few days bar one occasion. I was having issues with plex and people connecting from outside the network to it. I swapped routers and it bing stopped working. I swapped back to original router and rebooted checked again and nothing, no bing.
My next step was rebooted router, ont, switches. Checked no luck, then without rebooting pc or doing anything else in msfs I cleared reset dns through cmd on my computer, started game and was all working
This may have all been a coincidence but just thought I would leave this here. It’s been working since.
Few areas in Canada have Bing imagery, but they are literally like small patches of it.
And the funniest part, they come and go…
Gals & guys, don’t go crazy reinstalling your soul, this is most likely a server issue. Open a ticket and give it a few hours. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.
Cheers.
