I just installed WU13 and I also got the ATR, because I am an optimist and hopeful the „Checking for Updates“ problem will be fixed (soon). The new releases are amazing, as far as I can tell from videos and screenshots, because unfortunately I could not try them myself yet.
WU13 consists of 26 packages. So I removed 25 to install it and to end up with 447 installed packages in to total. I thought I give it a try after the MSFS XBox update and see if I can push the limit. It did not work. The sim got stuck at startup. Then I continued as follows:
Removed 1 package (using cloud)
446 packages (?)
STUCK at „Checking for Updates“
Removed 1 package (using cloud)
445 packages (?)
STUCK
Removed more packages
436 packages
Startup working
Installed 10 packages again to get to old working limit
446
STUCK
Removed 2 liveries
444
Startup working
Added 1 livery pacakge
445
STUCK
Removed 1 livery
444
Startup working
So 444 seems to be the new limit on my XBox. Right now I have 116 packages that are not installed. I will remove most of the bush trips and discovery flights again to have some safety buffer, but that is really a pity, I like those.
The „space used“ shown in content manager is 259,20 GB.
I think this is really a problem with the network communicaton for the update check. I kind of assume that since SU12 the check happens in a single request, which of course gets bigger with the number of packages installed. If that is the case, perhaps the requests are running into a (configured) size limit on the server and that problem is not handled properly by the server code. The update check is probably the single biggest query going from the sim to the server. There are usually no limits on downloads, but incoming requests often have limits. Maybe we are even triggering some DoS protection mechanism. This is of course all speculation, since I don‘t have any insights into how MSFS and its servers are implemented, but these kinds of problems happen and often they don‘t show up in testing environments used by developers to test their code.
I have no idea why the limit would go down from 446 to 444 after the latest update.
Anyway, thanks for all the work. I hope the testing helps. I am looking forward to a time when I can just fly instead of spending hours managing/fixing my installation. After all „THE SKY IS CALLING“. 