Normally I would criticise online only requirements but MS are actually trying something new here and doing something they couldn't do offline. The new high quality map in 2PB in size which obviously can't be downloaded so it has to be steamed.

The new high quality map in 2PB in size

Eek! Reminds me of a time when I worked for a GIS company who had a customer that had a requirement for a complete DTED model of the Earth (including oceans) at a 1m resolution.. Which was back in the early '90s and big disks were measured in GB, not TB.

Plus from the article-

Having its name linked to a failure of server scaling and planning is, therefore, less than ideal.

Indeed. So potential Azure customers may have learned 2 things, that, and it might struggle a bit with large datasets and workloads..

so it has to be steamed

Perhaps nicely Freudian, but possibly apt and which of MS's datacentres were doing just that. Plus Azure being a shared platform, at what point might resource demands from games like this start to impact those datacentres other users? Steam often struggles when big titles release, but their platform isn't shared with people who're trying to get work done. Unless they've shifted some of their back-end to AWS or another CDN like some other games companies have done. Which is mildy amusing given going onliine cut out retailers and allowed games companies to keep the full retail price, but now are going back to sharing that with online 'retailers'.

Actually, the client map used by flight sim 2020 is 2 petabytes. Works fine on high-end pcs with fast internet - except for the frequent service interruptions because Azure can't handle the peak load.

The increased map data will eventually be 4 petabytes, but much of that increase is because many parts of the world have very low-resolution coverage. And all that map data is available for use by those who don't "upgrade."

The forums at https://forums.flightsimulator.com/latest are awash with people successfully demanding refunds, and others saying "don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so."

Fortunately, the previous version works better. Maybe next year ... Or probably not.

It's easy to take the piss but what they're trying to do here is actually quite difficult.

Given it's Microsoft the use of Azure isn't surprising. Saying "but a database cache crumpled under demand on launch day" suggesting this is an Azure-only problem, which couldn't possibly happen on AWS or Google Cloud, is simply bollocks.

They should have perhaps tested it more by degrading individual services like the cache.

At least it's not *real* flights unlike with BA earlier this week!

Nevertheless there seems to be a difference in the way any good programmer asks themselves that question and the way Microsoft do.

Good programmers ask it to probe for likely problems and deal with them in advance. For Microsoft it seems to be a form of self-assurance inviting the answer "Nothing". Of course for the rest of us nowadays, when asked in the context of a Microsoft product, it's asked ironically.

> It's easy to take the piss but what they're trying to do here is actually quite difficult.

Not sure what was difficult compared to other launches, which a hyperscaler should be familiar with, particularly given years back it was this type of event (rapid elastic scaling without performance hit) that cloud was promoted as being good at….

Retries after failures extended load times and users who did get in were missing aircraft due to incomplete installations.

Best simulation ever! Under high demand, and limited resources, you miss your aircraft.

I'll get my coat....

Flight Simulator - Southwest edition ?

I have only seen Flight Simulator once, way back when, and that was on a peculiar Olivetti PC - pretty impressive at the time.

But these are simulated aircraft in clouds so a bit of turbulence then. I wonder are all the concurrent users' aircraft flying in the same simulated sky?

There's a multiplayer version if you want, but the default is single player so it's just you in the sky.

The main failure on Microsoft's side was not allowing people to pre-download the game and activate it later.

With the entire world trying to download and log in at the same time it was to be expected that something could be wrong, big time.

Apparently they haven't learned from the launch of FS2020, they've made exactly the same mistakes - but on a bigger scale this time.

How unfortunate that Redmond didn't ask Blizzard for a few pointers on how to do major online game launches.

I mean, it's not like they bought them or anything.

Oh, wait . . .

There is nothing wrong with the fans going crazy in a flight simulator assuming they adjust based on the throttle setting. Can they get them to have a proper audio beat for the proper black helicopter experience?

I had a Sun T1000 that would be quite nice right behind me while flying a jet fighter simulator.

[1]This and [2]that.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDik1UDl-Vg

[2] https://youtu.be/kb20xhcrK4g?t=45

Ironically it's the only MS product released this year without Copilot forced into it.

That deserves a pint. Well said.

Euro Fighter Typhoon and Flight Unlimited 3 still running fine on my souped up XP. He said retro-smugly.

Most of the maps/pics they use for this new version are almost as old unless you live in CA.

Sponsored by Boeing

MAX-imum effort for that joke... here's a pint for your trouble.

X-Plane is still the industry standard.

I have v11. From what I've tried, it meets my simulation needs and I think it's good value for money. Microsoft products don't really excite me enough to spend $$$ on them.

Maybe releasing a game that requires an always online simply to run, and requires hundreds and hundreds of pounds in extras to actually be playable... was a bad idea.

I once worked out on an older version of MS flight sim.... that to own the whole game, would cost in the region of £1000+ and even with the sales they used to have (sales are worthless now) on the DLC, owning it all in a sale was still in the £500+ region.

That's not a game... that's a scam.

Don't look up Train Simulator then.

Rail-replacement Bus Service simulator