Is there any information on whether the game will have any kind of offline function like 2020 has with its offline patch and all the online options it has in options.
Any screenshot/video from 2024 with this information
In my opinion there will likely be an option to play MSFS 2024 offline, just like there is in MSFS 2020. The developers and publisher can’t afford to have truck drivers upset - they are partially responsible for making sure we all have food to eat!
I highly recommend today’s developer stream, where we’ll have the opportunity to ask questions - if the internet doesn’t explode from the stream popularity 
September 2024 Developer Stream (youtube.com)
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I find it unacceptable that yesterday, one of the questions was about some kind of offline function and they answered it by talking about something else that had nothing to do with the question itself.
I’m clear, it’s my wallet that’s talking…
I asked ChatGPT and it said
“ In Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 , offline functionality will likely resemble MSFS 2020 , where offline play is possible. However, access to high-quality features like live weather, real-time traffic, and photogrammetry requires an internet connection. If you play offline, scenery and weather will be more basic, relying on cached or default data, but you can still enjoy the core flight simulation.”
I’m hoping so too.
Just made an account and joined the forum because I’m also concerned about this. My intuition was always that it’d work the same as FS2020 and that you could just keep whatever cache you wanted to play offline, but the non-answer in yesterday’s stream has concerned me.
Can anyone confirm that playing offline is at least still a possibility? I’m not even concerned about internet speed necessarily, it’s just ludicrous to me to think that the servers can just shut down one day and you’ll be left with no way to play the game.
This is covered in the live stream, well worth a watch. Link to twitch stream is above.
Bottom line is that assets are streamed continuously.
Yes, we’re discussing the livestream in this very thread, and our conclusion is that this response doesn’t really address the question of whether or not you can still play offline with whatever’s locally installed in your system. The team has already been asked if optional offline play is a possibility at all in at least two separate instances (the other being covered in this thread), and in both instances they didn’t just give a straight “Yes” or “No” answer, which is pretty frustrating.
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I think it’s pretty clear - it won’t stop you flying, but don’t expect the scenery, other aircraft to look good/correct etc - in other words it’s not going to be an experience you’ll enjoy.
I don’t know, I hope that you’re correct but I’m not sure if the two statements I’ve seen in regards to offline functionality really confirm this. Hopefully you know more than I do tbh
The key point here is that it’s definely not what you want to do nor what is designed for. Neither is the current sim though, with everything offline it looks horrible too. I also wouldn’t expect you to be able to login to the sim or start a fight offline, they made that pretty clear, but if you lose connection whilst flying, it will carry on but the world is streamed so thats not going to look very good, plus no other aircraft, boats etc etc are all streamed in real time.
“Definely not what you want to”? I’m sorry, but I think that’s up for the players to decide if it is what they want to do, offline FS2020 with cached data is still pretty alright and, since they’ve explicitly stated that you can also pre-cache sceneries locally in FS2024, I don’t see why this should be a problem for users who might not mind missing out on all the extra bells and whistles of the cloud data. Of course you can’t just download photogrammetry and fully-accurate terrain data of the entire world, but again, no one is suggesting this either, just being able to have a few cities and landscapes of your choice saved on your computer so that you can boot them up anytime with or without internet - again, as it already is the case with FS2020 - sounds sufficiently fine by me.
I don’t know if they made that “pretty clear” but if you can’t even start a flight offline and you must always go through a login screen to play a game that, again, can have locally stored sceneries anyways, then that sounds pretty horrible actually? I wouldn’t expect always-online shenanigans from something as serious and enthusiast-driven as a flight simulator of all pieces of software, this seems like the kind of thing Call of Duty would pull rather than a studio like Asobo.
The sim verifies your account at startup. That’s an online process. If you’re not online for that, then i dont think the sim starts, which was confirmed in the dev q&a stream.
No problem if you want to play offline, all I’m saying is you’ll need to accept the limitations that brings.
If there’s a new verification on boot that always stops you from playing offline then that’s honestly some pretty aggressive and malicious DRM, which is a shame, I expected much better from Asobo. I was super excited for FS2024 but if all of this is the case then I might actually stick with FS2020, these kinds of business practices are morally untenable.
And I’m pretty sure basically everyone understands these limitations and wouldn’t mind them if they just had the option to do so. Seems like we might not even have said option, which is a shame.
Don’t think you can stay the sim today without account verification, so no change there
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It’s the same in 2020.
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I’ll be ■■■■■■, admittedly I never noticed that this was a requirement in FS2020. But it also sucks that it is in FS2020 if that’s the case.
EDIT: Wait, you guys mean you can boot in once and then turn on the offline mode for when you start the game in the future, according to this? If so, that doesn’t seem as bad as not having any offline functionalities at all.
EDIT #2: Also, apparently it depends on the launcher / edition? I have the disk version, so maybe that’s why I never encountered any issue with booting the game offline.
A clarification, msfs 2020 can be started without any type of internet connection on the device that is started, be it PC or Xbox, when starting the game, when it gets to the “press any button” part, once you press it, a mini gray window will appear “the license cannot be verified” you press OK and the game starts offline with the offline patch running.
When the Xbox network went down a few months ago people couldn’t play because it was down from the server side, but if it had been run offline from the client side, that day, you would have been able to play, but people are very ignorant…
Any news on this with the alpha test available? Any screenshots of the data option in the options menu.
I don’t have a screenshot, but I was able to turn everything off (streaming data).
It’s a shame that we, the potential customers, are the ones who have to find a way to get the information because the developer, who we are going to pay with OUR money, is not speaking clearly.
Here are the findings thanks to YouTube:
In 2020 we had a global button to turn on or off all online functionality, which is currently darkened but can be accessed by starting the game completely offline. There was also a button to use Bing maps.
In 2024 those 2 buttons do not exist, the buttons to turn off photogrammetry, time, multiplayer and traffic still exist. You can also turn off the rolling cache that they keep mentioning.
It remains to be seen what would happen if we try to start the game completely offline, will it try to use the bing maps or will it have an offline patch to be able to fly without said maps or what would happen if I start it offline but I connect, will it use the bing maps or the hypothetical offline patch or will it not let us play directly.