Is it too much to ask for a small image to be displayed when you first click to launch the game?
It takes ages to get to the first screen and you’re left hanging - have i clicked it? Shall I click again?
There’s a significant wait after clicking on the FS 2020 icon or Launch from Store or Play from Steam before FS 2020 decides to let you know it was firing up after all and brings up the main window. This is poor UX (User Experience). One of the first things you should do as an app developer is provide fast response to your user’s actions so they’re not left wondering if they didn’t quite register that button or double-click on the icon. At least throw up a quick splash screen immediately before you dive into the lengthy process of loading data and initializing everything. That’s UX 101.
Quantum Leap is a superb example of this. That game’s splash screen zips onto your monitor before you have time to blink, letting you know things are working fine and you’ll be gaming soon 
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I would like to see MSFS to display some sort of indicator that shows loading status when the sim/game starts to load. Too many times the initial startup take minutes to load. I check task manager to see if it’s running and it isn’t. Then I wait a minute or two or three or… And POOF. The turd magically begins to do it’s thing. Kind of a ‘who knows if it’s really doing anything’ situation.
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The sim loads in two stages with a ‘press any key’ message in the middle. The first part has no progress bar but the second does. The first stage does have an endless rotating indicator but it may not be there all the time
Once the initial load begins the spinning indicator usually goes away. And that is the part where we have no clue if it’s running or crashed. And it should only mean adding a few lines of code to add an indicator.
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From the moment you double click the MSFS icon or launch the program from the menu, till you see the first black screen, you have nothing telling you that the game has been launched.
It would be nice to have a small screen just saying that the game has been launched.
Thanks
Hi,
Here is a problem which deserves to be pointed out and which could be easily solved by the developers of Microsoft / Asobo: the very long time between the moment when we click on the icon to launch the sim and the moment when the first image of the credits appears on a black background (followed by Xbox Games logo); on a properly configured PC, this lasts between 25 and 35 seconds, during which time absolutely nothing happens on the screen. 
It can be painful for those new to the sim, and even for others. At the very least, a first image on the screen would allow to know that the software has been launched correctly after clicking on the launch icon. 
Regards.
Also, if you’re kinda impatient like me, you might end up starting a second instance of MSFS, which is only a window saying the application is already running, but those still can eat up a surprising amount of system resources, I’ve noticed. And they always appear behind the other window, so I only notice them when I shut down the game, usually after wondering why it’s so choppy today.
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In the latest Feedback Snapshot it was said that loading into the menu is significantly improved with the September patch. Hopefully that includes this issue as well. It looks like a bug, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another application consistently taking that long to properly start up.
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You can skip the credits logos.
Mine still takes 2:25 to load.
Make a new shortcut on your desktop with the path to:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start shell:AppsFolder\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App "-FastLaunch"
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@ xBufferzz: thanks for this possibility, I tried it, it works well and we actually save loading time. However, logo credits don’t really bother me. What bothers me is having an inert screen for too long before I reach the first logo.
@ ChaoticSplendid: hope the next patch will provide an effective solution to this little problem.
- There is a simple solution to that. Computer programmers call it Splash Screen. The older versions of MSFS have it;
- It would be good to have a check box somewhere in the General Settings window to skip over the playback of the Introductory video.
- There is no need to throw all the tasks and resources of the program on the user computer at the very start of it. What we need to have at first is a window for preflight preparation. It can be presented to the user in milliseconds. The rest can be loaded and downloaded in background mode when we read MET reports, calculate and set up all the flight variables, and later file flight plans.
- Not everyone of us wants “the whole world” (150 GB) sitting on his/her expensive SSD. Not everyone of us wants to waste time on loading “the whole world” each time at the launch of FS2020.
My request is simple - when I click on the icon on the Start menu, I get no confirmation whatsoever the program is starting. A simple dialogue is all that’s required please “MSFS is starting - please wait…” and I don’t need to wonder if I clicked or the mouse moved slightly, etc. Please.
Yes! The September update promises to ‘significantly’ improve load times, so I am hopeful that the confusing delay after launching the app will go away. Or yeah, just a simple dialogue.
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I agree!!!
Please!!! This is something that is really needed. When I start the game, I am always sitting thinking, did I actually click it? I actually usually open up task manager to see if its there. Its kind of annoying.
YES, Please, Microsoft and Asobo submit an image at launch time!
Because, between the moment when you click on the icon to launch MSFS and the moment when the very first image of the simulator appears (even by skipping the logo credits), it takes - at best - between 15 and 30 seconds during which absolutely NOTHING is happening, the screen seems to remain inactive. To the point that we do not even know if the program is really launched! As far as I can remember, no program does this, even in Microsoft Office: it’s really, really painful.
However, it should not be very complicated to present a quite simple image on the screen proving that, as soon as the launch icon has been clicked, the launch request has been taken into account and that the software has actually started. .
Am I the only one asking for this simple common sense thing?
Agree. Sometimes I think I didn’t started the sim.
Yep. The word you’re looking for is “splash screen” and it should be mandatory for as long as a program/game is loading up without any visual sign of it running.
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it happened to me several times, to launch twice the game and to get an error message because of that…