in MSFS2024, they says many things are moved to cloud and streamed to PC.
for example, ‘air planes are streamed from cloud’.
I don’t understand what that means. cockpit is downloaded and when pilot walk out to the cabin, then cabin interiors are downloaded streamly? noway.
to simulate airplane, airplane’s model datas should be fully downloaded and prepared.
so, what 's the meaning of ‘air planes are streamed’ ?
maybe, they just can be downloded and updated online without restarting program? ( but when launching airplane of cause. no one want their airplane changed while they are flying with it. )
well, I talked about this (what is streamed?) in other posting. but it was out of topic. so I continue here.
Streaming, basically it downloads the content you need and stores it in the rolling cache, and if you use the same plane or airport it takes it from the rolling cache if it’s still there.
That’s why dev from Asobo say to raise your rolling cache if you have a slow connection.
check the above location(it’s case for steam user).
airplanes are downloaded and saved on local storage.
youtube video is good example for streaming.
videos are partially exist on local PC (maybe exists on storage or just in memory).
so, even users with small amount of storage can see movies which is bigger than several GB in size.
I think MSFS2024 is implemented ‘on demand downloding’ for airplanes. it’s not ‘streaming’.
but, one thing better than before(msfs2020) is users do not need to restart sim to use newly downloded airplane.
Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a stream of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time;[1] this contrasts with file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains an entire media file before consuming the content.
Whole aircraft are not downloaded in one go, so you could argue that the ‘aircraft’ is streamed. However individual texture files are downloaded in whole before they are rendered, so you could argue that is on-demand downloading.
Really though, the mechanism and concepts are virtually identical. It boils down to the user’s PC not having everything it needs predownloaded, so it makes requests to the cloud server for the files. Just like as a video player approaches the end of it’s ‘buffer’ and requests the next ‘chunk’ from the server.
If you replace the words cache and buffer the way you’d describe them are virtually identical (unless you’re getting to a technical level), and they are used interchangeably quite often to mean the same thing.
Then once you think about the fact that you don’t receive the whole file in either case in one go, but rather as multiple small packets of data, the delivery method for on-demand download and streaming a video are identical. The difference is what happens on the end users machine afterwards, i.e. whether it’s discarded or written to the disk
The other aspect to look at, which should logically make it obvious is that Asobo plan on giving us the option to download planes instead of streaming them. If we could do that already why give us the option? The obvious answer being we can’t, for now.
“Media is transferred in a stream of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time”
among the above statement, the words ‘rendered in real-time’ should be considered carefully. because it’s the difference between streamed and downloaded.
in MSFS, when we fly, we only need current airplanes model (which is I am piloting with). we don’t need whole air planes in msfs. (we can see them but it’s different things from modeled airplane. just simplified one and it can be dealted like a sceanery).
whether something is streamed or downloaded can not be determinded by datas are saved or not. it is determinded by datas are processed streamly which means partially in realtime.
It can, I said the underlying data requests are the same, it’s just what happens to the data afterwards that differentiates them. When you stream something you receive a ‘data stream’ that you use and then discard, when you download something you receive a ‘data steam’ that you write to a file on your disk.
Which takes us back to my earlier point. What do you consider ‘data’ is? The whole sim, an aircraft, a texture for the aircraft, part of a texture of the aircraft etc. It’s all down to how the individual person interprets what ‘data’ is as to whether they’d call it on-demand or streaming.
Even in video streams that are ‘real-time’ they arent, because the player waits for a whole frame of the video before displaying it, it won’t just display one pixel that it has recieved. So if we apply this to MSFS, you could argue that the Aircraft is the whole data object (the whole video file), and the individual texture has been streamed to you (the current frame of the video you have streamed and are watching at that instant).
Correct, we have no official way of downloading aircraft currently. We can stream them on-demand to a cache on our disk with the current setup.
There is a work around involving the SDK where you can turn on the Virtual File System, navigate to the ‘virtual folder’ of an aircraft, copy and paste it (download it from their server), and then process the downloaded files into a mod package.
In MSFS2020, you had to download the whole of the game up front, e.g. aircraft, buildings, tree textures, elevation data, etc.
The weather data, live traffic positions (but not aircraft models, they were downloaded when you installed the game), aerial imagery/photogrammetry was then streamed in addition to this, to improve upon it.
In MSFS2024, you download a small launcher to handle the streaming requests, then everything is then streamed to your PC.
This meant that on MSFS2020 you could fly without an internet connection, because you had a copy of the world downloaded locally. It wouldn’t look as good and you wouldn’t have live weather etc., but it still worked. On MSFS2024, you must have an internet connection at all times because of this.
The first time you launch the game it forces you download the whole Base Game.
You can then download additional things from the Marketplace like World Updates or Add-ons (aeroplanes, sceneries etc.) if you want to.
They are the things you are talking about choosing, even if you don’t choose any of them at all, you still have to download the whole Base Game up front.
so, not a big things are changed from MSFS2020.
just initial download size are changed because many thing are changed as optional.
→ this is what you are saying? it’s also what i am saying. and definately it’s not ‘STREAMING’. ):
On MSFS2020 you must download the whole base game, you can then download add ons, then you can stream Weather and Aerial Imagery. It will work without an internet connection, but you wont have Weather or Imagery.
On MSFS2024 there is no base game download, you can not download add ons, you must stream everything. It will not work without an internet connection.
It will be streamed automatically, in the background behind the screen.
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