Loading Stuck on "Fly" Page, Possibly Related to Online Functionality

[Mattadee1522]

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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 User Support Hub.

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

When loading into the sim from the world map or ‘fly’ page, the sim will become stuck at approximately 75% of loading. If I ALT+TAB out of the sim and then try to ALT+TAB back into it, nothing happens from this point. The application is shown in task manager as still running without issue, but there is no other way to progress from this screen without force closing the simulator from task manager.
However, if a flight is started with “Online Functionality” toggled off in the simulator settings under data, the flight loads okay. Online functionality can then be toggled on again within the simulation itself without causing any issues.
I have done a clean reinstall of my simulator since this issue first arose and it still persists. I do not believe it is related to any third-party addons as the issue persists even with an empty community folder.

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

I could attach a screenshot of a loading screen but that wouldn’t tell you very much

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

The first time this issue occurred I was trying to load into the GotFriends Discus 2C Glider (the free package) with the HB3300 livery found here https://flightsim.to/file/66262/discus-2c-2b-fgzo-fleet-package. I had flown the glider previously in this livery with no issue until I selected the “show tail number” to OFF in the customisation settings. At this point the sim bricked itself and I believed the issue to be related to the glider although now believe it relates to Bing. Since reinstalling the sim I have been able to load in this third-party aircraft with the third-party livery and toggled off the “show tail number” to OFF and this has not caused problems, it’s only when “Online Functionality” is toggled on that the sim gets stuck… but prior to trying to fly this glider in this config, I was able to load into the sim with “Online Functionality” toggled on just fine.

Many issues may be due to an outdated graphics card. Please state your Graphics Card Driver Manufacturer (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) and Version (Learn how to find your current graphics card driver version):

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti AERO OC 12GB DLSS3 Graphics Card - GV-N407TAERO OC-12GD

PC specs and peripheral set up:

[Gigabyte B650 AORUS Elite AX, AMD B650-Mainboard - Sockel AM5, B650 AORUS ELITE AX 1.0]
Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz C36 Intel Optimised Desktop Memory
AMD RyzenTM 7 7800X3D Desk-top Processor (8-core/16-thread, 104MB cache, up to 5.0 GHz max boost)
Samsung 980 PRO M.2 NVMe SSD (MZ-V8P2T0BW), 2 TB, PCIe 4.0, 7,000 MB/s Read, 5,000 MB/s Write, Internal Solid State Drive

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As the sim technically doesn’t crash and becomes stuck on perpetual loading screen it is not possible to provide this.

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

1.37.19.0

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[TheSevenflyer]

Thank you for this report. We’ve moved your topic into the User Support Hub.

The Bug Reporting Hub is for posting suspected or confirmed bugs that other users are able to reproduce without duplicating an existing bug report. Using the template or providing all the relevant information about your bug and sim setup is required in order to provide valuable information, feedback, and replication steps to our test team.

If you are not sure if your issue is a bug or need further input from the community, please use the User Support Hub category. If the community can replicate your issue, first search the Bug category to see if there’s an existing topic. If it already exists, contribute to that report. Duplicate bug reports will be closed.

If you believe it is a new report and no duplicate exists, then create a new bug topic using the provided topic template.

All issues caused by or involving third-party addons/mods should be reported to the third-party developer. Assure that no addons/mods are used when reporting issues in Bug Reports.

[TheSevenflyer]

At any time, have you installed the map mod?

[Mattadee1522]

I also did some more tinkering with the sim earlier. If I turn on Bing data during the flight, the sim performs normally for about 1-2 minutes before freezing in a similar fashion to what happens on the loading screen. This is whilst in safe mode.

[Mattadee1522]

I am assuming you mean the Google maps mod, in which case the answer is no I have not.

[FieldGunner]

I’ve been experiencing this after clicking “Fly” as well. I’ve never tried using the Google maps mod. In my case if I wait long enough the flight will eventually start but last night it took about 5 minutes!

I think this is in combination with what ever else is happening at the server end lately. I’ve also relatively recently (last month or so) been having a high number of bandwidth warnings saying it’s too low to use photogrammetry. I have a wired connection to the cable modem and Gig internet speed. Super low ping latency to other services such as Google but relatively high to the Azure servers (usually 80+).

What is very disappointing is these issues have only started in the last short while. Previously I never got warnings nor did it take an unusual amount of time to load the flight. I’m on the West coast of Canada in case there is a geographic component regarding the connection back to Azure services. I’m adding this info in the hopes Asobo and MS will dig into this because what ever is going on is affecting multiple aspects of the sim and from other posts affecting a number of people in different ways. Is it the overall ability to deliver the service or is it region specific?

VERY worried about the prospects of MSFS 2024 given it will have even more dependence on Azure services so hopefully the team will start digging into this now rather than wait for the launch of the new version.

[bam12208834]

I experienced the same issue yesterday. It took about 10 minutes to load into the flight where I was in the PMDG 737-700 at KDAL. Then the yoke in the 737 was turned to the left and the plane was unresponsive. I then exited out of the flight and re setup the same flight. After a long loading time I was back in the PMDG 737-700. However I did not have any terminal building at my gate. Just the jetway. After another 2 minutes the terminal building slowly appeared. This time the 737 was working fine. I think the issue is still the MS servers. This has been going on way too long. There is no way I’ll even think about MSFS 2024 until this issue is fixed. I hope not but I think the launch of MSFS 2024 will be a disaster filled with MS server issues. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber. My PC is connected via ethernet. My internet is not the issue.

[Mattadee1522]

@FieldGunner @bam12208834 I got my issue fixed after scouring these forums for anybody experiencing the same thing or something similar.

I am linking the post which ultimately worked for me here, but I will also include the text of what I did for posterity and the next person to experience this issue digging through the forums 5 years from now.

Game freeze when online functionality is switched on

I found the solution posted here: eventually worked for me. I encountered several issues when going through these instructions but finally succeeded to reset my cloud profile by pulling the internet plug from my pc while MSFS was loading which apparently made MSFS create a local profile instead of working with the cloud profile. Key is that you get MSFS to ask for either LOCAL or CLOUD profile on the next start. Choose LOCAL and a new cloud profile will be created. Issue solved. There shou…

Essentially, the issue for me was caused by my cloud profile being corrupted somehow. Unfortunately there is no way to simply delete your cloud profile from within MSFS, so you have to brute-force it by doing the following:

1. Load MSFS as usual
2. While on the loading screen (“Checking for Updates”) pull your Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi router if you’re using a wireless connection.
3. MSFS might take a moment or two to figure things out and will then prompt you to install an “update” - a file only several kilobytes in size. This is a new local profile that the game creates in place of the cloud profile it can now no longer access.
4. Once on the main menu, close MSFS.
5. Re-connect your ethernet/Wi-Fi
6. Launch MSFS again

On launching MSFS for the second time, the local profile is no longer required as the game realises you now have an internet connection. Therefore it creates a brand-new cloud profile for you. This, for me at least, then meant I could load into a flight with online functionality turned on as normal, and the sim has performed normally for the last 2 days since I fixed this.

Hope you guys find this useful and get your sims fixed!

[FieldGunner]

Thanks. I didn’t need to do those steps but around the same time as the very slow loading was happening, I did get a message about having a newer profile on my PC than in the cloud with a prompt to choose one. So, I do believe the cloud servers were having major issues. I think there was even an outage a couple of days ago.

They are still be having issues because I’m still getting frequent warnings about not having enough bandwidth for photogrammetry - which is also a relatively recent issue which I did not have otherwise over the last 2+ years.

When I do the azure speed test 2 the initial results are in 500+ milliseconds with only a few servers returning results but then as more servers respond it will eventually settle down to around 75 +/- (still bad) from the fastest responding servers. In contrast pinging Google gives me a 12ms response.

[SmotheryVase665]

@FieldGunner

the initial results are in 500+ milliseconds with only a few servers returning results but then as more servers respond it will eventually settle down to around 75 +/-

That suggests to me that the initial routing path is inefficient. The routers between you & the Azure servers are gradually optimizing the route until they find the best path (at 75ms) to the Azure server “closest” to you, latency-wise. Whether MSFS is accessing a server in that Azure datacenter for all data requests is unknown.

MSFS may be using that datacenter for authentication & profile information, but might not be using it for downloads or streaming (we don’t know). The multiplayer server options we see in the game are only for data pertaining to multiplayer-specific data.

The 12ms response time from Google may be because

• There are physically more Google servers out there and/or
• One is much closer to you than the Azure servers and/or
• The Google server is situated closer to an internet “backbone” than the Azure server and/or
• The Azure servers are swamped with requests for data & cannot handle the requests in a timely manner

[FieldGunner]

@SmotheryVase665

The Azure servers are swamped with requests for data & cannot handle the requests in a timely manner

This is my suspicion since it wasn’t a problem before. I see others on the west coast of NA reporting similar experience in various threads. I’m really hoping MS will add more nodes or look at what ever is required to increase responsiveness for the ever growing user base / demand. MSFS without the photogrammetry working smoothly isn’t anywhere near as enjoyable an experience.

To help troubleshoot and/or provide more useful information, is there any way of determining which nodes the data is coming from? Perhaps a command line like tracert with specific options?

[SmotheryVase665]

@FieldGunner

is there any way of determining which nodes the data is coming from?

You could use a program such as WireShark to analyze the network traffic, but it is a complex program with a fairly steep learning curve. Tracert requires that you know the destination IP or network address beforehand, which you can get with WireShark & similar network analyzers, but they usually have such functionality built in anyway.

[FieldGunner]

Thanks; I was thinking more that you might know the DNS name for the service which could be traced to see hops/latency. Also was thinking MSFS might use a service name to connect to then Azure services would direct to what ever servers are considered the right ones for your geographic region for that service: i.e. if I were to ping/trace the name I would get a different IP address then if you were to ping/trace the name assuming we’re living in different regions.

[SmotheryVase665]

Replying to @FieldGunner in DM as going off-topic…

[phutyoo]

Still pretty sure most of these issues come from gaming services updates. The repair tool should run automatically on XB app boot but I run it most days before starting. More often than not it’s finding something to update or repair when I run it. I never have hang loads or searching for updates if it’s up to date.

[FieldGunner]

Had the profile issue again today along with the warning messages about bandwidth as well as blurry grounds textures. I’m convinced the profile issues and bandwidth warnings are related - different symptoms of the same problem of high latency.

It’s been an interesting 24 hours and I believe the solution for me is to use a VPN . As part of the trouble shooting I followed the recommendation late yesterday to get back to a basic install by removing the contents of the community folder as well as everything from Marketplace. I removed all the World Updates and City Updates while at it with the logic of those also being from the Marketplace. Tested again and, not surprisingly, it made no difference.

When I started reinstalling all the packages, I was getting terrible performance; normally downloads from Marketplace, World Updates, etc, have been good for me so this was a new problem too. Speed was literally as low as 1-2 Mbps (sometimes even lower in the Kbps) and I thought it was going to take weeks to get everything reinstalled. So, while the download was chugging along I was able to catch up on old threads about the same issue. Tried the suggestions: cancel / restart, reboot, disable the tuning option using the netsh command, etc. No difference - still crawling. THEN without doing anything, after about 2 hours into the crawling download I glanced over and noticed all of sudden the download kicked into gear - back to what I was use to seeing and reaching nearly 300 Mbps at times. This was around 2:30am. I was not making any changes at the time, just reading the news and waiting. So, somewhere along the path between my computer and the download servers SOMETHING got reset or I got kicked over to another path or another server. Needless to say I finished doing the reinstalls while the getting was good! Not having touched anything and seeing the dramatic change fit with some of threads I was reading about “buffer bloat”, ISP throttling and so on.

After some sleep, however, I was disappointed today to see that what ever had improved my situation last night was fleeting. Right back to blurry textures and warnings after flying for a short while (the scenery starts OK but as new sections need to load the problems start). If go to the exterior view, and use the ESC key to pause the game, I can watch the ground textures very slowly load and catch up.

A common solution I saw in the threads was to use a VPN because of “buffer bloat” as well as the belief that people’s ISPs were throttling (packet shaping) their gaming streams. Given what I saw last night with the sudden speed fix during the downloads I started to think that might be what’s changed for me in the last couple of months as well. I’ve been with Shaw Cable (Canada) for years but they were bought out by Rogers Cable a while ago and have been slowly changing things over. So, I started to wonder if this was the actual cause of the changes I’ve been experiencing.

I decided to give Nord VPN a try. It made a huge difference. I flew for several hours today without a single scenery glitch or warning. I was monitoring the network adapter performance with Task Manager on my other screen both with and without running the VPN. Without the VPN I was only seeing incoming traffic at very low rates - rarely above 5Mbps which I believe is one of the trigger thresholds for the warnings. With the VPN I saw large bursts of incoming traffic as needed when new sections were loading - even saw one that nearly hit 70 Mbps but most were in the 10 - 30 Mbps range. I tried VPN connections to 2 servers in Seattle (can’t get much closer to MS lol!) as well as Vancouver. I live on Vancouver Island so these are the closest VPN points to me anyway. With the VPN the textures and the photogrammetry looked great - certainly the best I’ve seen in while now.

I think another telling sign is the connection and latency you can see under your user name. My normal latency has always been in the 70-75ms range. With the VPN it was half that on the 2 US servers and only slightly above half on the Vancouver server (41ms). I realize the displayed connection is for multi-player and the scenery data may be coming from other servers. However, I believe the latency being half is still indicative of the improvement / problem. Something between my computer and the data centers is throttling the traffic OR the data server I would normally get assigned to, were it not for the VPN masking my actual location, is not performing as well but this second scenario is less likely the issue.

(No VPN)

(Seattle VPN)

(Vancouver VPN)

I read the arguments that using a VPN will make it worse because it introduces more nodes and encryption BUT for me this appears like it may be my salvation. If I just got lucky and things go south again while using the VPN I’ll report back but for those of you reading this thread and suffering loading issues, profile issues, or latency warning issues, you might want to give a VPN a try.