I’ve been noticing something along these lines for a few months now. Today, just for fun, I decided to undergo the punishment of reinstalling MSFS in hopes that it would solve my stutters. And so my experiment begins.
While I was in process of re-installing my purchased addons, I noticed something as the files were being stored on my SSD.
In this one case, the Paderborn file download comprised of 12+ files (it was still downloading when I captured this, there were a few more after). The total of the files is in the ~14.5 Gb range. See below:
Once the installation was finished, I went to check the final installation size and as shown below, it is 3.9 Gb.
I downloaded 14.5 Gb to install 3.9 Gb!!!
My assumption is that when we download an update, it’s actually ALL the versions of the addon/base file structure slapped together. Meaning, the same file maybe over-written several times with a patched version.
I work in software, and this is somewhat common. However, when software installations get into the Gb size, the packages need to be re-baselined to the latest version.
NOTE: I noticed this too with other Sim updates, and I think the note for SU4 that the install size was reduced helped, but I’m still seeing multiple copies of similar sized files being downloaded, that ultimately total 2-8x of the final installation size.
I don’t have a bandwidth issue, but for those who are constrained by network bandwidth or caps, this is crazy to me.
What do you all think?
