Why cant we or i play this offline?
Playing this game uses my data from my internet provider, Why can i NOT play this offline without using my data? Microsoft or xbox please?? fix this asap??
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You can play offline. Turn off the data usage in Options -> General -> Data
Do expect a severe degradation in scenery quality, though.
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what happened to my aircraft i noticed a few are missing?
Which version did you purchase, and which aircraft are missing?
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I re-found the aircraft after changing the settings. I have all the aircraft,
Thanks guys clear sky’s and remember any landing you can walk away from is a good one
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Actually, you can’t.
You need the Internet to start the program.
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You are correct.
What many people do not recognize is that you cannot start the program without access to the Internet.
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Actually, that’s not acurate, at least for the Microsoft Store version.
The reason I know this is one night I was testing something on my desktop, and I had removed the Ethernet cable from it. The next day, I fired up MSFS, and completely forgot to reconnect the cable.
I noticed two things, and didn’t twig until after the flight had ended. None of the servers were available, along with no multiplayer or AI traffic, and the scenery looked a bit rough.
But I completed a flight like that for more than an hour, with no Internet connection.
Interesting. Thanks for that.
You should be able to start offline.
Edit: hobanagerik beat me to it 
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I couldn’t when my internet unexpectedly went down. I’m using the Steam version - Steam was in offline mode and other games started fine but FS wouldn’t get any further than the TBM loading screen.
I have the game pass version and if game pass is offline the sim won’t start. Maybe the store version is different as there is a start up disk.
I was planning to buy the store version but if it is entirely dependent on the Internet even to start then that is a problem.
I have 100mb/s Internet but like many others have experienced, dropouts are increasing since Covid as the online infrastructure creaks and everyone is online simultaneously.
I just found out today that the game is useless without internet, this is ridiculous. If anyone know how to play msfs 2020 without internet please let us know. thanks…
I feel your pain, and if you find out how please let me know. thanks
Even if you could, apart from no live weather, no live traffic or MP, you would also have to put up with default scenery, and no photogrammetry (depending on the location some might consider that a blessing in disguise!).
You can set it to offline mode and play. Set the manual cache area for better visuals. It’s not useless.
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I tried that, it does not work.
I need a little more than “does not work”
It appears that, for me, I can play ‘offline’ only by going into options>data and turning online functionality to ‘off’.
In order to run MSFS (and avoid having it crash to desktop) it appears that throughout the whole process I still need to maintain an active internet connection. If I have no internet connection I cannot run MSFS as it throws up an authentication error. If I disconnect the internet connection, while MSFS is running, then the program crashes to desktop.
Setting MSFS to offline mode and exiting the sim, disconnecting the internet and trying to re-run MSFS leads to an authentication error and will not let me run the program.
Reports of users having their logbooks wiped seem, anecdotally at least, linked to turning those data features off. I think a pop-up appears stating that you have some packages out of date, and if you proceed past that point you see your logbook has had its hours wiped to 0.