Regarding for a moment the cause, I’ve been trying to think of a way of detecting what might happen when this occurs, and someone who gets this a lot would be useful here.
I’ve come up with a script that will identify the connections that MSFS has made, and just leave a number of dumb pings running in the background, with each ping running in its own process. I’d be interested to know whether there is an interruption to this ping packets when someone gets the “Connection Lost” message.
It may not even be related to these particular servers where a connection has been established, but its better than nothing, right.
$fsconnections = Get-NetTCPConnection | select Local*, Remote*, State,@{n="ProcessName";e={(Get-Process -Id $_.OwningProcess).ProcessName}} | Where-Object { $_.ProcessName -like "FlightSimulator" -and $_.RemoteAddress -notlike "0.0.0.0" -and $_.RemoteAddress -notlike "::"}
$fsunique = $fsconnections.RemoteAddress | Get-Unique
foreach ( $connection in $fsunique ) {
start cmd " /c ping -t $connection"
}
The first line builds a list of connections that are owned by “FlightSimulator”. This is then filtered down into unique addresses, then each is set with a ping that doesn’t terminate.
You will see that some won’t ping, and that’s fine. It’s possible they are firewalled off, but for the ones that do respond…who knows, maybe we’ll see an interruption there.
If someone gets that pop-up, it would be a case of quickly Alt-Tabbing through on all the “Command Prompt” sessions to see a break in the pings.
I think Azure should be working with Asobo to build that kind of live monitoring in to MSFS so they can get automated and live feedback about what servers / connections are chronic problems for users all the time - and do everything to AVOID breaking immersion.
It should not be up to users to diagnose / fix connections to Azureedge or MSedge servers, and any interruption should have a MUCH more graceful fallback behaviour than breaking immersion.
2 Likes
No, but its fun all the same. 
If it was down to one or two servers glitching out, and enough users reported the same IP, that might help in some small way. Or we can all just sit on our hands. I know which one I would rather do.
Even a sharp increase in latency might be useful information, that could indicate a connecting getting saturated.
1 Like
Agreed - I hooked up a Wireshark to my Xbox to try to do the same, but in the end I’m not a packet inspection expert. I offered PCAP files here to Asobo and MS but had zero response. So I put my efforts in to trying to alert MS / Asobo there is a large, growing pattern of network connectivity problems, and that the behaviour of MSFS when there is a slight interruption is terrible.
Most importantly, there seems to be a responsibility gap - Asobo only does MSFS code, Azure provides CDN, but the forum and Zendesk have no visibility or authority over network issues so reported issues just don’t get a response.
2 Likes
It would help if that dialogue box that pops up gave even the tiniest hint or exactly what it had lost connection to, and report that in the dialogue box itself.
Since MSFS was released in 2020, I’ve seen that message maybe 2 or three times, at most, so I’m not best placed to identify possible causes in any way.
Regarding the response from November 18th:
So, we wanted it to be very clear when people were losing online connection.
Mission accomplished on that front, no doubt.
And we’ll look at, maybe, adding a way to mute this thing or something like that, of course.
I wouldn’t say mute it. By all means let us know something bad has happened, but don’t ram it down the users throat. A stylised network cable in the corner with the stop sign overlaid, even the words “Disconnected” or “Offline” would be better than what we have now.
1 Like
I would say the design is 100% backwards. MSFS relies heavily on servers, for authentication, weather, traffic, bing maps, photogrammetry, ATC, etc, but it seems to put responsibility on the user
- When any server has a connection issue, the FIRST thing it should do is send a log to MS / Azure / Asobo - so they can see the patterns and start to address them.
- Next, it should check / ping other servers … if only this or that server has a connection issue, when others don’t, then obviously the issue is somewhere upstream from the user - not the User’s internet conection itself.
- Perhaps as part of the GamerTag in the upper right corner, where it currently lists the Multiplayer servers, they can list the other various services (Auth, Bing maps, Weather, ATC, Traffic, Photogrammetry) and the status of the individual connections IF the user wants to check - but otherwise… DON’T BREAK IMMERSION.
- At very least offer a setting to allow / disallow the intrusive messages (which the user can’t do anything about anyway).
- Only if all servers are unreachable - meaning, no internet connection at all - inform the user, IF they have the setting ON that they want to be informed.
The responsibility should be on MS / Azure / Asobo to really check what server is a problem and when. They need much better automatic telemetry feedback from our MSFS installs as part of the standard data collection to improve and maintain a level of quality.
Currently MSFS acts as if it is in Debug mode. Asobo should get the alerts, not the users.
For example - wouldn’t something like this be better?
3 Likes
Great - I’m glad to hear it. However, the lack of communication from Asobo - especially when they say things like “it’s the first time we hear about it”, FEELS like it is ignored.
4 Likes
I like the menu mockup. Hit Esc to interrogate the meaning behind the less intrusive notification you would get when actually flying.
The idea is “Server Report” would open a detail page, and offer more info, as well as a button to Submit a Report to MS / Asobo in addition to automatic telemetry.
1 Like
You’d still need some unobtrusive error message while in flight to indicate if something was wrong though. You could then go to your menu mockup to get more information on what that might be. Something has to prompt you to want to go to that menu first.
I’d want the option to NOT have any message. If weather or traffic or terrain details are slow to load, or stop loading, it will be apparent visually anyway, so there is no need to put up a message. Also, what exactly is the user supposed to do with the big center-of-the-screen message? Nothing. It’s always a server issue, so just allow flying to continue, and allow the user to turn off the intrusive messages.
1 Like
You might want to read what “unobtrusive” means. 
A message in the corner telling you something has gone wrong, not in the middle of the screen. Just an icon that indicates a connection issue, nothing more.
2 Likes
This would be better - a Network Toolbar icon, which would allow the user to see the connection status of each MSFS online service. And MSFS should be reporting this telemetry to Microsoft / Asobo anyway, so they can see patterns of server connection issues in real time, and determine if there is a software bug, or a CDN issue, or … if all services are unreachable, have more graceful fallback behaviour to continue flying offline. Any change will be visually apparent, and there should be an option to disable the pop up messages entirely.
3 Likes
Do not freeze the game mid-flight when MSFS services go down or degraded.
Whilst flying (regardless of the phase) I am occasionally interrupted by a dialog box which completely freezes the flight telling me that I’ve been switched to offline mode. There’s no option to disable this.
Fancy terrain is secondary to flying. It is a flight simulator after all not Google Earth, so we should be able to fly uninterrupted. A non-interruptive message is sufficient.
3 Likes
Just to be clear, there are 2 different messages, One of them the “lost connection” message, which doesn’t pause the sim, but it forces us to clear it before we can gain back our controls. The other one is the “low bandwidth” error, which DOES pause the sim. Both are equally infuriating. Although they’re 2 different error messages, they both need to be addressed by Asobo collectively, rather than independently.
6 Likes
I had a new one (for me) yesterday:
Got the low bandwidth warning on final to KMDW (custom scenery).
Accepted and cleared the message.
Over the next 5-10 seconds I watched in amazed horror as an entire forest of low-res vegetation carpeted the runways! It could have been something from a (bad) Roland Emmerich movie.
A go-around was performed and once things had calmed down a bit, I paused the sim and went back in and re-enabled Bing photogrammetry. This reversed the rapid forestation of Midway and I was able to land without further sci-fi movie moments.
Honestly, this SIM!
3 Likes
