Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is struggling to take off after launch

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launched this week on Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass, but players are reporting a lot of performance issues, including long queue times or not being able to play at all, with some players stuck at 97% when loading in. In a video posted Wednesday, Asobo Studios apologized for the launch, explaining that it “underestimated” the demand on its servers.

“We knew the excitement was high for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but frankly, we completely underestimated how high, and it has really overwhelmed our infrastructure,” series head Jorg Neumann said. “We’re really sorry, we want to apologize.”

The game’s X support account recommends thazt players reboot the game if they get stuck above 90%, and that check the Xbox Status page for any updates. It also mentions that the waiting queue problems have been resolved.

A lot of the issues come down to new features added to this new entry in the series. To cut down on how much of this gigantic game needs to load in (assets, maps, etc.), Asobo Studios implemented cloud storage technology so that it only needs to load what’s in your flight path. The game makes a request from the server, and is able to pull assets from a database. That request can take a while to fulfill, so a lot is stored in the cache. This was tested before launch with simulations of 200,000 users.

In the video update, Asobo CEO Sebastian Wloch explained that the long loading times and many of the performance issues are due to strain on the servers’ caches. The large amount of requests has caused that cache to be “saturated.”

Wloch said the team tried restarting the services, throttling the number of players, and increasing the queue size for higher speeds, but that only worked for a little while before collapsing due to the sheer number of requests. It also results in many elements not loading in, like default aircrafts that are deemed “optional.”

“We’re trying to investigate, doing our best, and going as fast as we can to make sure everybody goes in,” Wloch said.

It’s not uncommon for a game as large as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 to have launch problems. It’s incredibly taxing, requiring 64GB of RAM to run at recommended settings on PC. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 pushed people to buy more RAM and upgrade their PCs. These problems go much further, and players have noticed. The Steam version has an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating right now.