What you have to consider are those simmers who aren’t necessarily tuned into exactly which day an update is to occur. Nothing wrong with just firing up the sim for an enjoyable flight without having to check this forum if an update is to occur and then making changes to your community folder.
Keep in mind these updates are mandatory so delaying it by the end user is not really an option. If changes are necessary to the community folder Microsoft should take care of this as part of the update process.
Here’s another story. I un installed this program and started to reinstall it this morning. After about 14 hours it had reached about 42%. When I checked it before going to bed it has started all over again and was at 2%. What is up with this thing?
I personally don’t think it’s the MS Servers. I suspect the issue is actually outside the realm of flight simulator code. Something like GamingServicesUI which installs and runs your games on your PC.
I was in the Microsoft store today and noticed an update to gaming services - hmm. I guess time will tell us what really happened…
There is no need to clear the Community folder unless you experience trouble.
This has been communicated even by the official experts in this forum.
SeedyL for example have spoken about this more than once in the fridays flight stream.
And, what often is forgotten or just ignored:
Not every MSFS customer understands english!!
Some of my older german flying buddies simply didn’t need it in their past live.
@Baracus250@FlyerOneZero The devs (or a small group of them assigned to) do regularly respond but it’s on the SDK developer forum, a separate area that is more technically oriented for SDK dev issues. It’s great they do that, and it’s been a lifesaver on a couple of occasions for me personally. You can’t always be guaranteed a reply there either, for any number of reasons, but I appreciate greatly that they even have that channel open.
I can understand why they don’t do it here on the main forums, as while there are technical issues as well to be addressed it’s an even deeper rabbit hole and timesink than responding to 3rd party dev questions/fire alarms, so it is best handled by the community team with an interface to the bug/triage system. Download issues likely also involve MS infra teams, so there’s an organisational time component involved there to coordinate a response and a fix. Graceful degradation doesn’t seem to be a feature of the update process, unfortunately.
That said, they could probably tweak the reponse system to have a team in place for update events like this when things can go belly up, so reaction/response is faster.
Same with me, I have had all my addons in an external drive and now I cant even re-path them. I too am going to have to start completely from scratch to the point where I’m feeling done with the sim.
I’d like to know why it updates flawlessly for some but not for others. That’s the curious thing. Everyone gets the same update. I’ve never had an update problem with this sim. Not once. I can somewhat sympathize with people who want to play right away, because I too would want to play. But some of the impatience is a bit… much? I mean play something else for a day.
But still, it’s curious why it works sometimes and not others.
This may not be helpful but I recently had problem with a DLC not downloading. I tried a few times over several days and it just wouldn’t. After a while I decided, oh, what the heck, I’ll send in a ticket. Then I went looking for it to see if it was partially installed. It wasn’t. Just an empty folder that once held it. I removed the folder and it installed perfectly. Is that stupid? Yes. Because the new folder is (of course) the same identical name. But once you know… you know. For anyone having trouble downloading this update, maybe try removing all folders associated with it.
Oh, it was getting stuck on decompressing too. That seems to be a fairly common theme with this update process.
That sounds like the right way to go with MSFS updates ( especially the mandatory ones)
Every time I’m confronted with mandatory updates I welcome them by clicking ‘OK’ , meanwhile, I empty/backup the content in the community folder and walk to the kitchen for a needed cleanup, fire up the duster and give the windows and bathroom some extra attention.
Mowing the grass in the garden also.
In other words: MSFS helps me keeping my property clean and in good shape.
Happy
Now, let’s say you were in the beta. In that case you got most of those sim update packages spaced at least 3 days apart. There was never a crowd trying to download them. It came down at around 100 MB/s. Took 4 or 5 minutes tops.
Then, on sim update day, you would find 0 megabytes to download in the “searching for updates” loading screen. And then 270 MBytes for the DC-3 update in Content Manager. That’s it!
The DC-3 update comes down slow, stops, restarts. But the issue is only on that one file.
Anyway, I was in the beta. Always have been. Don’t have these issues of congestion on several files on sim update day, except for 1 or 2 small files. Everything in the update has spaced out in for weeks.
To avoid issues with joining beta and then reverting if something bad is in there: just move Community and Official out of the default location (which MS tells you to do when you joined the beta).
If you cut and paste to move those two folders, then it will take 6 or 7 minutes. If you copy and paste: it will take hours.
You only have to do that 6 or 7 minute chore once in your life. Or until you decide to upgrade to a new larger NVMe drive. That would take hours.
There are literally thousands of computer/console/network configurations out there.
Some have major problems with the download.
Some (like mine) have minor problems. In my case I experienced an issue with 4 aircraft updates restarting over and over. I got it resolved pretty easily.
Some have no problems.
I’m not going to comment on whether it’s appropriate to constantly blame Microsoft for not fixing this (or any) issues that only affect some users in a ‘timely’ manner is in itself ‘appropriate,’ because it’s not appropriate for me to do so.
Zero problems here except for a very slow download at one point. I started the update process in the morning and used the updated game that night. FWIW
Fortunately, because I can only play about once every 1-2 weeks (no time in my schedule) I have the luxury of checking this forum before EVERY SINGLE STARTUP of the sim. If I see that there is a new update, I immediately rename community folder along with about 4 or 5 other things to prep. Unfortunately, no one should have to do this.
Same for me. Only noticed so far is for the Fiat G-91 from Sim Skunkworks - odd behaviour on take-off, veering off to the left, and popup menu looking very odd. But this will hopefully be fixed by Skunkworks
Fully agree with the recommendation – Have an Empty Community Folder BEFORE doing updates.
(by whatever means you choose – Rename – Addon Linker etc etc)
However, I have NEVER done this, and have never had any issues with updates EVER, even when updating many Beta Versions.
What I have found I need to do, is to temporarily Disable MalwareBytes when doing updates, and that AV program will often cause decompression to hand, when updating MSFS.
Or to be more precise.
If I updated with Malware Bytes running, I often use to get update HANGS.
If I now always update with Malware Byte turned OFF, I NEVER get update HANGS.
I left my community folder as it was, and everything went fine. However, I use addons linker so switching everything off would have been easy if needed.
