I know that the below has been discussed before but I feel that this needs to be reiterated.
I am extremely frustrated with MSFS. I have been a flightsim enthusiast since the advent of the IBM PC and when Flight Simulator was still in its infancy and owned owned by SubLogic. I have purchased every version of Filght Simulator since then and have purchased most versions of Prepar3D and X-Plane not to mention all of the great military simulators since the Jane’s series.
I, therefore, waited with great anticipation for MSFS and purchased the Premium edition within the first week of its release. I knew at that time of the 100 gb download.
Having owned numerous flight sims, I never anticipated all of the bugs and the numerous and time-consuming updates that I would have to download over last 8 months(approximate)… but I will still give MS and Asobo a pass as this project was such a great undertaking.
I have been busy over the past two months with family and work and have not had the time to use, MSFS for two months. So today on a Sunday afternoon, I had some time to kill and I sat down at my computer and was going to use MSFS, but l never expected to have to download a 78 gb update! Two hours later the update is just finishing loading and my free time on a Sunday afternoon has passed…and I never got a chance to use MSFS. I do not know when I will have the chance again.
The bottom line: There needs to be an option to delay an update for at least 1 or 2 program starts so that the updates can be performed at a convenient time or there should an option to schedule the updates at off hours such as over night. Windows 10 has these features, why not MSFS?
Anyhow, just my opinion.
Note: I think that this is the second or third time in my life that I ever posted to any forum, so I realized that this would be an important option…at least to me. MS/Asobo, thanks for your consideration.
Updates don’t happen that frequently. Just start the sim once a week even if you’re not using it, that should make sure it’s good to go when you have some time.
I do think it would be helpful if there were notifications of updates.
Although I more or less agree, I can understand why it’s not so…
This whole sim depends on all kinds of services… having a newer version run next to an older version, will no doubt cause a lot of headaches on the developer’s side. Perhaps not with every update, but with some it would. And they seem stressed already as is.
Everyone must play in the same sandbox.
If the update is related to the game itself, then it will be mandatory, in order to keep everyone on the same page.
World updates are optional.
Forced updates are completely normal, whatever you use or play will update first. My PS4 can‘t be used online before I updated it, every app running there needs to be updated first to be used online. Most games on PC do the same. The problem with MSFS is the exorbitant time it requires for a few GB due to their unpacking procedure. That‘s what Asobo have to fix.
As @CooganBear just said, to be a little more clear, what you’re asking for is impossible for the most part if you want to take advantage of Bing and many other features, like Photogrammetry, etc…
It is somewhat possible today, but, you’d have to go into the Store and turn on the “Play Offline” mode. Then, when you play, you’d have to disconnect your computer from the internet. You’d be stuck with the base scenery (which essentially looks like FSX), and won’t have any online features, like weather or multiplayer or anything else. And you can’t apply updates to any of your addons that would apply to the next level.
As soon as you integrate ANY online feature, you cannot have anyone playing at previous versions. It’s just not possible. That’s all there is.
Technically, only core sim changes must be mandatory. I would think that changes to aircraft and scenery should be delivered as updates through Content Manager rather than being delivered as part of core sim updates or world updates. Doing that would allow people to avoid picking up the update if there were regressions. It would be even better if Content Manager would allow for rolling back and/or downloading specific versions.
They already do that with scenery. World updates sofar Japan, US, UK/Ireland and Netherlands/Belgium/France all had a large part in the Market Place to install separately. If you forgot these optional parts, you miss a lot of nice new scenery !
Yes, the problem with World updates is that they aren’t granular enough. If they roll in updates to hand-crafted airports or other discrete scenery and then end up breaking something, it then puts the user in the position of having to choose between taking the entire update with the accompanying bugs or skipping the update and getting none of the benefits. It would be far better if discrete pieces were always updated through content manager, rather than rolled into other update packages (which is ostensibly how Content Manager is supposed to work). You may be right that they are now doing this though. As I think about it, I seem to remember picking up a bunch of updates through Content Manager recently. If so, that is great.
I don’t care much about the order of things. Updates come when they come, I would like to have a more accurate indication what time it will come, actually… But when I have time for it, I install everything in one go. Else I postpone the scenery part for next day. Sometimes this optional part is not only scenery: after the UK update I found nearly all my aircraft had an update option via Content Manager ! Actually I don’t like that, I would like to know what the (exact) changes are for each aircraft.
As for the question here, it has been discussed many times. I think it is too early to have different client versions in parallel, because of server complications… that remark has already been made.
There are two parts of all updates. 1. Updates to scenery, which is like a scenery mod and you don’t have to load it, and then
updates to the core sim, which has ALLL kinds of dependencies on multiple systems like flight model, how scenery is streamed, what is streamed, how weather works, and on and on and on. Both World Updates and Sim Updates have option 2 in them. Dataset 2 has to be the same for everyone or the software won’t work. That’s all there is.
If you don’t want to apply an update, you HAVE to fly Offline. You have to disconnect your computer from the internet. You can’t use live weather, you can’t use bing scenery or photogrammetry, you can’t use multiplayer, you can’t see real time traffic, and on and on.
And you can’t install the scenery updates, as they likely depend on code in dataset 2.
As this is an always online game this simply can’t happen.
It’s an online game. Update it in the middle of the night, not as the OP said, when I kick it off because I finally have some spare time on a Sunday night.
[e.g. Sunday night tonight. I load MS Flight Simulator thinking I have a couple of hours before bed after working solidly the past few weeks… [EDIT: 79.8 GB, ] 78 GB update on a 50 Megabit DSL connection. Yaay, no MS Flight Simulator for me until next weekend (when there will possibly be another massive update). ]
