Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 dev apologizes for 'what can only be described as an awful launch experience'

Just as Path of Exile 2 is struggling to get its servers working today, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 couldn't get off the ground on launch day back in November. Despite running tests that simulated 200,000 users, MSFS 2024 devs admitted they "completely underestimated" how many players wanted to dive into the sim on day one, which led to an enthusiastic playerbase staring at an unchanging queue and loading screens showing 0% progress for hours.

Today, the MSFS 2024 dev team hosted a livestream where head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann addressed and explained that frustrating first day.

"I just want to thank you for all of the encouraging emails, texts, and other contacts we had during what can only be described as an awful launch experience," Neumann said. "We want to deeply apologize for what happened."

Neumann explained that it wasn't an issue with the server or the client, but "problems with the layer in between, called the CDN," which stands for Content Delivery Network. It's the same network used for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 to stream world data to players, but it was simply overwhelmed by traffic at launch. "Someone told me we had 100 billion package requests on the first day," Neumann said. "The infrastructure simply could not handle the amount of requests and started to fail."

Eventually the team was able to modify its system to be able to handle all those requests and smoothed out all that launch day turbulence. "It took a few days, which really sucked, to figure it all out," Neumann said.

That doesn't mean the work is done: as I noted during launch week, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is chock full of bugs, too. Two bug-fixing patches have already been released, with another planned for next week on December 10 or 12. During the livestream, the devs shared a spreadsheet of the most requested bugfixes they've received, such as:

• A issue where airport and nighttime lightning are unrealistically bright
• Live weather not being separate from the date of the flight selected
• Mouse freelook being overly sensitive
• A possible issue with VRAM impacting fps performance

Here's one bug request I definitely agree with: "Wind and turbulence in Career Mode is ridiculous," a bug that I'm happy to see labeled as "fixed" on the spreadsheet and will be part of next week's patch. Great! I'm a bad enough pilot as it is without being subjected to unreasonable amounts of wind while I'm trying to take some doofus sightseeing over Billings, Montana.