Just for fun, to the question of how many nuclear power stations it takes, let’s do some math.
My computer has a ~500W power supply and I don’t think the download took more than an hour. 0.5 kWh hour then assuming that’s all my PC was doing. Hell let’s round up to 1 whole kWh.
The nuclear plant down the way from me covered that expenditure in 0.0015544 seconds.
No, you didn’t. But you suggest it’s up to the customers to have to work around Microsobo’s poor optimization. What you suggested goes both ways. THEY have to fix their problem. It’s not up to customers to have to do this. Yes, we can, and we do. But that doesn’t absolve them from fixing the problem they created.
If Exxon creates a large oil spill, it’s not up to citizens to clean up the mess. It’s up to Exxon. Yes, people can and DO help, but imagine if Exxon brushed it off and did nothing while leaving everyday people to clean up their mess. This is analogous to what’s going on here. Albeit without the potentially deadly environmental impact.
I really enjoyed your mathematics, it’s always fun to put numbers to a topic like this. I didn’t bother to crunch my own, however, because a) I don’t think MSFS users by itself will beak any particular camels back, and b) there are far too many unknown variables that stop us from getting a good accurate number.
With that said, rather than looking at this as an issue at scale, let’s look at it on an individual level.
Generally speaking, it is bad practice to sell and distribute a product to customers, that through your poor design choices, and or execution generates unnecessary cost for the aforementioned clients. In this case, our costs are:
In normal circumstances, if a user was to buy a product from one manufacturer, but its ongoing costs were significantly higher than a competitor with a comparable product. The consumer may choose to switch, this can put pressure on producers to make their products as efficient as possible. As it stands this isn’t likely to happen here, because depending on what you are looking for you in your flight sim experience, there are no alternative options.
Still - It would be good practice to improve the user’s experience, as it helps with customer retention, and like it or not, the download system has been a mess since launch, and will continue to be. My hope is now that the big goals Microsoft have ordered Asobo to reach have no been (mainly) completed (VR, Xbox), that we will start to see improvements to things like download systems, pervasive and long-running bugs.
An improved download system would reduce the load on components, and by extension offer a reduction in power consumption. But more importantly, it would also reduce the number of people who have issues installing the sim. I was very disappointed that 11 months on since launch, two days ago I had to tell someone how to fix the file download loop because that is a bug that has been extremely pervasive, and yet one that has never been fixed.
The whole project by your assessment is irresponsible!
Facebook and any social media system, the ‘cloud’, the internet idea all require huge amounts of power for stuff we don’t need. So don’t pick on this to register your concern. You are using precious energy for nothing.
The update only took 15 minutes
The rest of the time your gpu’s were all being used to mine crypto
(Joke)
Thanks for all the varied responses. We encourage you all to participate (and vote as you see fit) in these threads that capture the essence, if not the passion, of this post. Thread closed.