No offence taken. I agree with all your points and understand the issues, if you had read all my responses later on in this thread you would have understood my point and position somewhat more. My point is that whilst mandatory updates are required I have been looking to see if there is a better way of applying them to avoid the issues I spoke of in my first post.
Other than a small delay I can’t see an easy way to achieve this but I have found a work around if I have a multi player event coming up say on the next day when an update has been announced, I just start MFS the night before and leave it running. This works perfectly well and shows that this is possible in a way as I will be flying with an un-updated sim while others may have updated. Granted there may be issues or conflicts but maybe not and if not at least my planned flight was not posponed.
Cloud services are generally hosted locally. In the US there are Azure server farms across the country that serve the different regions in order to get the best performance for a customer. If the data center for US Azure was in Seattle, Los Angeles based customers would get a much better experience than those in New York for example.
As such, international data centers for Azure services can be updated at different times.
Thank you for your replies. I appreciate the problem that having pilots on different versions causes testing and problem solving issues and my concern is not about the strength of servers but the mandatory nature of updates which often delays being able to join a schedule group flight. Based upon the replies so far it seems that there is no real need to make updates immediately mandatory because as you say the updates are done at different times for different countries/regions/servers. Even Microsoft’s other “little” software Windows 10 does not mandate updates. Maybe Asobo will put a time limit on updates giving a user 24 or 48 hours to run the update. Anyway I appreciate the comments and suggestions. Have a happy and safe 2021.
I do not have a lot of free time and when I have the desire to play this flight simulator, I want to play it. I dd not want to wait over night or even more than 10 minutes. I am not a gamer so I guess I’m not used to waiting for stuff like this. I downloaded it once. I can understand the occasional update, but not ever single time I want to play the game. All I can say is, it is frustrating and I am done playing it. Wasted money is what I call it.
I partially agree with the original request. I’ve been developing apps for 10+ years and while there are some updates that truly are mandatory, many are not.
Very rarely do we modify backend services to the point they break compatibility with the current release. Typically new server features are added that new client side releases can take advantage of, but the core APIs remain compatible.
Think about all the cloud enabled apps on your phone, how often are you FORCED to update to a new version? Typically you’ll get a notification that a new app is available with new features or bug fixes, but you aren’t required to update unless you’re REALLY out of date.
Additionally, the majority of the files in MS/Asobo’s 20+ GB updates are new assets/models as part of the world updates that I frankly don’t care about right now. The actual executable files are pretty small and could be updated in minutes, not hours.
These surprise hour+ delays are making it very difficult for me to practice in the rare free moments between work, home life and actual flight lessons. At the very least, they should allow you to postpone an update like you can with Windows Updates. Even pushing the update back up to 24 hours would probably satisfy most of us so we can just let it update after finishing a session.
I’m just wondering how the big MMO’s handle when they have multiple DLC’s out that are not mandatory, only the people who pay for them have access to that content. They’re coordinating client and server side code in at least a somewhat similar way, I think. Could that system/structure be applied to world updates, not as a purchase option, but as an opt in/out type of thing.
I now accept mandatory updates but it would be not to hard to code in a tempory hold. Maybe the big issue is MP, so a check could be made ingame for the version and if it is not current than the MP function could be greyed out until the sim is up to date. Most agree that we are only talking about a temporary hold on the update for those that have a small window of opportunity to fly. If it was without MP that would at least be some compromise and surely this would not affect anyone else. Just saying.
I agree, having different “states” of code versions would make things a lot worse, or broken altogether. Microsoft has the right to prescribe how their code is managed within their products. It’s simply NOT a democratic issue, although it is desirable to have as much cooperation as possible, which is why they solicit feedback. Asobo, as a development partner, has matching responsibilities also. It’s virtually impossible to test every configuration and their permutations, on everybody’s computers. I’m not saying it is “odd-man-out”, but ever since the “personal computer” became the standard in the 1980s, the notion of perfectly configured hardware and software environments within product lines came to an end.
It’s unplayable to me because I’m stuck on file 10 of 162 files for over two hours now. I’d rather have played the game offline for those two hours then updated over night. I hate the messed up downloader.
As far as I know, at least from experience, there is always a version update whether you buy that expansion content or not. Everyone is always on the same version of the base game, and the update is required. It’s just the new content you won’t have access to if you don’t buy the expansion. Basically, just like what MSFS is doing now. You don’t have to download the new world update content, but you do have to be on the current version of the base game.
That might be the case, except every time I load an update, my MSFS 2020 gets corrupted.
When I’m short final, or close, I lose all power and control of the aircraft. If you’re going to make
updates mandatory, at least make sure it will work on the average system. I think this has been a prevailing problem for a lot of users.
I’m forced to delete the program and reinstall, until the next catastophic update; very annoying to the point I want to go back to X-Plane 11.