MSFS 2024 Apologizes for Rocky Launch, Cites High Demand

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 experienced a challenging launch, and its head has openly acknowledged the issues. Dive deeper to understand the reasons behind these problems.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Head Acknowledges Day-One Launch Issues

The eagerly awaited release of MSFS 2024 has been marred by bugs, instability, and server problems. Jorg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, along with Asobo Studio's CEO, Sebastian Wloch, addressed these concerns in a YouTube video titled "Developer Launch Day Update."

In this roughly 5-minute video, Neumann and Wloch delved into the root causes of the game's issues and outlined their strategy to resolve them. Neumann admitted that while they anticipated high excitement for the game, they underestimated the sheer volume of players. "It really has overwhelmed our infrastructure," he confessed.

Wloch further elaborated on the technical challenges. "At the very beginning, when players start, they’re basically requesting data from a server, which retrieves it from a database," he explained. This database, equipped with a cache, was tested with 200,000 simulated users but was overwhelmed by the actual number of players.

MSFS Login Queue and Missing Planes

To mitigate these problems, Wloch and his team restarted the services and expanded the login queue size and speed by five times. "It worked well for maybe half an hour and then all of a sudden the cache collapsed again," Wloch noted.

They identified the cause of the prolonged or incomplete loading times. Once the service becomes saturated, it fails and restarts, leading to repeated attempts to load the game. "That creates extremely long initial loading, which is not supposed to be as long," Wloch explained. This saturation also results in the loading screen stalling at 97%, forcing players to restart the game.

The issue of missing planes, reported by numerous players, is due to incomplete or blocked content. Even after successfully navigating the queue, some players found certain planes or content missing. "That’s totally not normal, and that’s due to the service and server not responding, and this cache being completely overflowed," Wloch stated.

MSFS 2024 Faces Mostly Negative Feedback on Steam

These launch issues have led to significant criticism from the Steam community, with players reporting issues like extended login queues and missing planes. The game currently holds a "Mostly Negative" rating on the platform.

Despite these initial setbacks, the development team is actively working to resolve the issues. "We have solved the issues and are now bringing players in at a steady pace," the team announced on the game’s Steam page. "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We will keep you updated on our social channels, forums, and website. Thank you very much for all your feedback and support."