Okay so after reading the article, that 150MB/s statement is doing a LOT of heavy lifting.
So first off, that was the fastest they recorded. So they just took that times an hour and said “Whoa if it stayed that sustained for the whole hour it’d be 81GB!!”. Bam, clickbait title achieved. Ad revenue pleeeease
Now, for actual data, it looks like in rural areas it’s about 10mbps and in cities about 100. I’ll just throw it out there, why wpukdnt you want it to stream back as fast as possible?
This is like the same stupid RAM argument. I WANT you to use as much as you can! What is the point of paying for the pipe if you don’t use everything you can?! There is no reason they shouldn’t push it through faster. It’s not more data, it’s not a constant stream of 150MB/s like the garbage title claims, it peaks at 150MB/s. So good. I’m paying for gigabit, use the full pipe. When I’m playing a game that is my number one priority, give it to me as fast as you can.
It’s not just the bandwidth that’s the issue it’s the amount of data as many people have datacaps.
The article says:
official Microsoft bandwidth recommendation for that game was 50 Mb/s.
which comes out to 23GB/hr. That can add up quick. 10 hours in a month equates to 20% of my cap with Comcast.
This also neglects people who live in rural areas that might not even have 50Mbps available and can’t play because MS streams half the game to you rather than include it in the install files.
Almost every plan is uncapped, but a few (at least one I know of) does, name the cheapest offering from Moi. But that’s the rare exception and it’s a plan specifically known and tailored to be cheapest of the cheap.
Sure, you can turn off data streaming too. It also allows you to cache the data, just like fs2020. My point is that the article makes it about the speed and makes some arbitrary data points. Your data examples are more accurate than theirs. They only presented a worst case scenario, not what will actually happen
“Meanwhile, scattered reports of **MS Flight Sim 2020’**s bandwidth consumption point toward a more conservative ~100 Mb/s in densely populated photogrammetry areas, such as major cities. Usage in lighter areas could dip as low as 10 Mb/s, though the official Microsoft bandwidth recommendation for that game was 50 Mb/s.”
Flight Sim 2020 had a higher install size and lower bandwidth. Flight Sim 2024 has a lower install size and higher bandwidth requirement. Even if the sustained load isn’t using the maximum bandwidth, it still means that 2024 will use a significant amount of bandwidth such that it may affect customers with data caps.
Because it is accessing petabytes of world data. In the old days, you’d store the world on your PC and they had relatively insane storage requirement. Now it’s just too much. The current MSFS has 300GB of content, but you can download areas of world data on your hard drive to cut down on streaming data in areas you go to often. So a lot people have a 500GB+ drive just for MSFS. This new one is supposed to require much less space.
It’s just using Bing Maps data, which is smart. Not everyone flies at 35,000 feet, low altitude flights look spectacular and are accurate in a way no stored world map could. The terrain is automatically generated from Bing data, not hand modeled. Every building is in the right spot, is the right height, and the exact right shape, and it costs me no storage. It’s an obvious evolution of the genre with all kinds of benefits. Like all airports on earth, even grass landing strips, that are visible in Bing Maps, exist in the game without having to be hand modeled or stored locally. It detects them automatically then plops down an in game runway, tarmac, and taxiways on top of the satellite imagery in the exact shape and size as the real thing. It’s really cool!
But it can be that detailed for nothing, so why not? They own Bing Maps. They already have optional extra high detail for certain areas you can keep on your hard drive, just as you suggest. That’s why some people have a TB of game content. That’s what the new game wants to fix. The Bing stuff fills in the bits that aren’t bespoke. In the new one it streams it all, and most people who actually plays the genre are very pleased about it.
It’s not for nothing. If they keep the ability to have it on your hard drive then that’s fine. But if they don’t, then people are going to be hitting their data caps super easily.
It’s the entire planet, in higher than high def. Every tree, every polygon. We’re not talking on the TB scale, this is on the PB scale. Everything from Azure maps.
Okay I feel like you’re just being glib now. You can fly down to any detail, you can fly down to your own city, fly past your house. You can land on your own street if you want to. It’s the entire globe. You’re not constantly at 30k feet, you can go down and fly around San Francisco, or the Grand Canyon.
Yes… that’s why they have a slider bar for what resolution you want your terrain at? In FS2020 it was a zero to 400 fidelity scale. You’re arguing that the top of the line shouldn’t be top of the line, when there are so many settings that can be tweaked to the user’s preference. An overwhelming number of settings. FS2020 came with presets for what Azure Maps fidelity you wanted if you didn’t want fine tuned controls.
Correct. FS2020 had many different settings. You could have sweet ultrahd graphics streamed from azure, or you could do many lower qualities, or even pure offline as well. I’m guessing this will have similar options. Which is why I think this article is clickbait. Yes, it can stream that much from Azure - that doesn’t mean it’s required to.
I’ll just throw it out there, why wpukdnt you want it to stream back as fast as possible?
Speed is not the problem. The problem is the sheer quantity of data needed to play a video game. Some people have data caps. Others may not be able to run the game smoothly, and others still not at all.
This is like the same stupid RAM argument. I WANT you to use as much as you can! What is the point of paying for the pipe if you don’t use everything you can?!
It’s not stupid to not want software consuming more RAM than is necessary.
Seeing how the game isn’t out yet and we don’t know what the settings are, I’m not going to agree with this non-article that it’s always streaming that much data. FS2020 had different settings that you could put in, caching levels, caps, and more. I highly doubt it’s constantly streaming that much.
As for RAM, disagree. In the case of games, it makes no sense to keep reading and writing from disk when there is ram available. Store it in RAM so it can be accessed quickly. The key is if the application releases RAM when the OS requests it to be released, or there is pressure. If I’m playing a game with 4k textures I 100% would rather have as many of them loaded into RAM when playing to make a smoother experience than constantly hitting my disk, which is on the thousands of times slower. I have 64GB just sitting there, I want them to use it.
I’m not going to agree with this non-article that it’s always streaming that much data.
What article are you talking about? The one in the OP doesn’t say that.
Meanwhile, scattered reports of MS Flight Sim 2020’s bandwidth consumption point toward a more conservative ~100 Mb/s in densely populated photogrammetry areas, such as major cities. Usage in lighter areas could dip as low as 10 Mb/s, though the official Microsoft bandwidth recommendation for that game was 50 Mb/s.
What is the point of paying for the pipe if you don’t use everything you can?! There is no reason they shouldn’t push it through faster.
This is the reason why I leave the shower running in every hotel I visit. And at the buffet, I tell the waiter to fetch me a trash can so I can actually get rid of the whole thing. If I can, I usually leave both a heater and an air conditioner running in the hallway.
Edit: Wow. I had completely forgotten about this comment. I really didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. I work with networks. I know we’re not literally going to run out of internet. But everyone treats bandwidth as this freely available resource. Advertisers, consumers, creatives and Jürgen. Fuck you, Jürgen. We both know that downloading 6 fucking MB every time someone wants to queue up the database is fucking insane, as is your reliance on client-side bullshit.
Anyway, whenever a anything loads slowly, think about why. Bandwith is not free. It’s a maintained resource.
Well clearly you drank the Comcast kool-aid. Bandwidth is nothing like clean water supply, food, or generated electricity. It’s more like traffic on a highway. Sure, there is a finite amount of room on the highway, but until you hit that at any one time, there is room on the highway for more traffic.
It could be a problem if everyone was playing flight simulator at the same time but they are not.
None of these are the same comparison. There is no “wasting” Internet speed.
The comparison would be better to turning on the faucet halfway to fill your cup slower. What’s the point. You’re using the same amount of water. Just open it all the way and fill your cup.
The cup doesn’t keep overflowing with data. You’re downloading files, once those files are done downloading it’s done. It’s not like it “forgets” and accidentally downloads the whole internet. What a weird way of thinking the internet works
Okay so after reading the article, that 150MB/s statement is doing a LOT of heavy lifting.
So first off, that was the fastest they recorded. So they just took that times an hour and said “Whoa if it stayed that sustained for the whole hour it’d be 81GB!!”. Bam, clickbait title achieved. Ad revenue pleeeease
Now, for actual data, it looks like in rural areas it’s about 10mbps and in cities about 100. I’ll just throw it out there, why wpukdnt you want it to stream back as fast as possible?
This is like the same stupid RAM argument. I WANT you to use as much as you can! What is the point of paying for the pipe if you don’t use everything you can?! There is no reason they shouldn’t push it through faster. It’s not more data, it’s not a constant stream of 150MB/s like the garbage title claims, it peaks at 150MB/s. So good. I’m paying for gigabit, use the full pipe. When I’m playing a game that is my number one priority, give it to me as fast as you can.
It’s not just the bandwidth that’s the issue it’s the amount of data as many people have datacaps.
The article says:
which comes out to 23GB/hr. That can add up quick. 10 hours in a month equates to 20% of my cap with Comcast.
This also neglects people who live in rural areas that might not even have 50Mbps available and can’t play because MS streams half the game to you rather than include it in the install files.
Also *Mb/s not MB/s
Many countries don’t have data caps on broadband.
Wasn’t even aware it was still a thing, apart from on mobile (where it somewhat makes sense-ish)
My friend says they don’t have data caps on mobile in Finland.
Almost every plan is uncapped, but a few (at least one I know of) does, name the cheapest offering from Moi. But that’s the rare exception and it’s a plan specifically known and tailored to be cheapest of the cheap.
*Most
Sounds civilized and competitive.
Sure, you can turn off data streaming too. It also allows you to cache the data, just like fs2020. My point is that the article makes it about the speed and makes some arbitrary data points. Your data examples are more accurate than theirs. They only presented a worst case scenario, not what will actually happen
You can force a download of it, just be prepared for the massive install size, which also won’t help the people with data caps.
You can pause large game downloads and pick them up again later.
I mean, assuming you’re using the maximum recommended bandwidth 100% of the time…? Doesn’t seem very realistic.
150Mb/s, way different than 150MB/s…
This is why I prefer MB/s and Mbit/s it’s less ambiguous.
Or use octals -> 1Mo/s = 1MB/s = 8Mb/s
No risk of confusion.
1 MB ≠ 1MiB though.
Removed by mod
What ISP? That seems awful.
Every ISP I’ve ever had in America.
I’m sorry that seems awful 😞
Removed by mod
I’m sorry that must suck.
Sounds like they need to throttle their payments
Yeah man, all the way to zero, because that’s how much you pay for no internet.
I am fortunate to have the option to switch internet providers.
That is what I was referring to.
You are mixing up the different values.
“Meanwhile, scattered reports of **MS Flight Sim 2020’**s bandwidth consumption point toward a more conservative ~100 Mb/s in densely populated photogrammetry areas, such as major cities. Usage in lighter areas could dip as low as 10 Mb/s, though the official Microsoft bandwidth recommendation for that game was 50 Mb/s.”
Flight Sim 2020 had a higher install size and lower bandwidth. Flight Sim 2024 has a lower install size and higher bandwidth requirement. Even if the sustained load isn’t using the maximum bandwidth, it still means that 2024 will use a significant amount of bandwidth such that it may affect customers with data caps.
Why is it using the Internet anyways? Storage is cheap. They’re selling 12 TB hard drives. What do I care if FS2024 is an entire TB?
Because it is accessing petabytes of world data. In the old days, you’d store the world on your PC and they had relatively insane storage requirement. Now it’s just too much. The current MSFS has 300GB of content, but you can download areas of world data on your hard drive to cut down on streaming data in areas you go to often. So a lot people have a 500GB+ drive just for MSFS. This new one is supposed to require much less space.
And with 12 terabytes on a 250 dollar hard drive, why do I care about 500 gigabytes?
If they’re using petabytes of data for flyover territory then they’ve already lost their goddamn minds.
It’s just using Bing Maps data, which is smart. Not everyone flies at 35,000 feet, low altitude flights look spectacular and are accurate in a way no stored world map could. The terrain is automatically generated from Bing data, not hand modeled. Every building is in the right spot, is the right height, and the exact right shape, and it costs me no storage. It’s an obvious evolution of the genre with all kinds of benefits. Like all airports on earth, even grass landing strips, that are visible in Bing Maps, exist in the game without having to be hand modeled or stored locally. It detects them automatically then plops down an in game runway, tarmac, and taxiways on top of the satellite imagery in the exact shape and size as the real thing. It’s really cool!
But they can pack that down and create regions. That doesn’t need to be at super high definition for the entire globe.
But it can be that detailed for nothing, so why not? They own Bing Maps. They already have optional extra high detail for certain areas you can keep on your hard drive, just as you suggest. That’s why some people have a TB of game content. That’s what the new game wants to fix. The Bing stuff fills in the bits that aren’t bespoke. In the new one it streams it all, and most people who actually plays the genre are very pleased about it.
It’s not for nothing. If they keep the ability to have it on your hard drive then that’s fine. But if they don’t, then people are going to be hitting their data caps super easily.
It’s the entire planet, in higher than high def. Every tree, every polygon. We’re not talking on the TB scale, this is on the PB scale. Everything from Azure maps.
In higher than high def? While you’re at 30k feet?
Ever look out a plane window?
What the fuck are they rendering?
Okay I feel like you’re just being glib now. You can fly down to any detail, you can fly down to your own city, fly past your house. You can land on your own street if you want to. It’s the entire globe. You’re not constantly at 30k feet, you can go down and fly around San Francisco, or the Grand Canyon.
Okay and? They’re still delivering at a higher resolution than most people can or want to achieve.
This is absolutely ridiculous, even for that mission statement.
Yes… that’s why they have a slider bar for what resolution you want your terrain at? In FS2020 it was a zero to 400 fidelity scale. You’re arguing that the top of the line shouldn’t be top of the line, when there are so many settings that can be tweaked to the user’s preference. An overwhelming number of settings. FS2020 came with presets for what Azure Maps fidelity you wanted if you didn’t want fine tuned controls.
So they aren’t streaming graphics at higher than high def then. Which means it likely fits on modern hard drives just fine.
Correct. FS2020 had many different settings. You could have sweet ultrahd graphics streamed from azure, or you could do many lower qualities, or even pure offline as well. I’m guessing this will have similar options. Which is why I think this article is clickbait. Yes, it can stream that much from Azure - that doesn’t mean it’s required to.
Speed is not the problem. The problem is the sheer quantity of data needed to play a video game. Some people have data caps. Others may not be able to run the game smoothly, and others still not at all.
It’s not stupid to not want software consuming more RAM than is necessary.
Seeing how the game isn’t out yet and we don’t know what the settings are, I’m not going to agree with this non-article that it’s always streaming that much data. FS2020 had different settings that you could put in, caching levels, caps, and more. I highly doubt it’s constantly streaming that much.
As for RAM, disagree. In the case of games, it makes no sense to keep reading and writing from disk when there is ram available. Store it in RAM so it can be accessed quickly. The key is if the application releases RAM when the OS requests it to be released, or there is pressure. If I’m playing a game with 4k textures I 100% would rather have as many of them loaded into RAM when playing to make a smoother experience than constantly hitting my disk, which is on the thousands of times slower. I have 64GB just sitting there, I want them to use it.
What article are you talking about? The one in the OP doesn’t say that.
This is the reason why I leave the shower running in every hotel I visit. And at the buffet, I tell the waiter to fetch me a trash can so I can actually get rid of the whole thing. If I can, I usually leave both a heater and an air conditioner running in the hallway.
Edit: Wow. I had completely forgotten about this comment. I really didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. I work with networks. I know we’re not literally going to run out of internet. But everyone treats bandwidth as this freely available resource. Advertisers, consumers, creatives and Jürgen. Fuck you, Jürgen. We both know that downloading 6 fucking MB every time someone wants to queue up the database is fucking insane, as is your reliance on client-side bullshit.
Anyway, whenever a anything loads slowly, think about why. Bandwith is not free. It’s a maintained resource.
Well clearly you drank the Comcast kool-aid. Bandwidth is nothing like clean water supply, food, or generated electricity. It’s more like traffic on a highway. Sure, there is a finite amount of room on the highway, but until you hit that at any one time, there is room on the highway for more traffic.
It could be a problem if everyone was playing flight simulator at the same time but they are not.
None of these are the same comparison. There is no “wasting” Internet speed.
The comparison would be better to turning on the faucet halfway to fill your cup slower. What’s the point. You’re using the same amount of water. Just open it all the way and fill your cup.
The cup doesn’t keep overflowing with data. You’re downloading files, once those files are done downloading it’s done. It’s not like it “forgets” and accidentally downloads the whole internet. What a weird way of thinking the internet works