Obviously the flight simulator runs in the cloud.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 sucks up to 180 Mb/s of internet bandwidth while in flight — equivalent to 81GB of data per hour
Submitted 2 months ago by Xatolos@reddthat.com to games@lemmy.world
Comments
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
People downvoting you didn’t get the joke.
leds@feddit.dk 2 months ago
Nah planes go wooosh over their heads
bitwaba@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Their head is up their ass, instead of in the clouds.
Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Oh they got it.
HorreC@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Cant wait for how many flight nerds are about to find out about their comcast data caps.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Or how many ISPs are going to accuse people of illegal internet activity due to large data transfers when its literally just a Flight Simulator lol.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s public domain music and Linux, I swear!
catloaf@lemm.ee 2 months ago
ISPs won’t even notice. They don’t care about big upload/download unless it’s continuous, affecting other users, or they get a legal notice.
nexguy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So Comcast users can’t have youtube tv?
HorreC@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The hard cap in my area is 300GB a month, you can only go over twice in a year and its only for 10GB and you pay 50$ each time. If you are over that limit they just shut it off.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
At this point you might as well stream the game video, it would be less bandwidth.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 months ago
This guy just invented Google Stadia
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Doesn’t it already run on Gamepass xCloud whatever they call it?
lud@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It wouldn’t be as responsive though.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Just fly Boeing in game. It’s a more authentic experience that way.
caboose2006@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
That seems excessive
SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It is. If it’s 140 mbit/s (or 15 MB/s), Flight Simulator only uses 54 GB per hour. OP is confusing bits and bytes.
It’s still a shit load of data.
ChuckEffingNorris@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I watched a couple Of live streams showing a graph for bandwidth as they flew. It tended to spike to around 180 MB a second when whole new areas were loading but during flight it was much much lower at around 10 to 15 MB per second.
LeroyJenkins@lemmy.world 2 months ago
3d terrain tile streaming takes a crazy amount of data. it essentially downloads hundreds of png files at a time and overlays them over 3d terrain data. Everytime you move an inch or pan the camera, it pulls down new data.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
That seems like a wildly inefficient way to render things
AlotOfReading@lemmy.world 2 months ago
MSFS implements optimizations on top of that (progressive detail, compression, etc), but that’s how almost all map systems work under the hood. It’s actually an efficient way to represent real environments where you don’t have the luxury of procedural generation.
Decq@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s literally how every 3d game works (barring a few procedural games maybe). Now they just stream those texture and meshes as needed and presumably cache them.
Don’t get distracted by this terrible piece of an article. It never states how long this peak was. It could have been just 100ms. So interpolating this to 81gb/h make no sense at all. It’s just pure click bait.
In the end only the total volume downloaded matters (which the article of course doesn’t mention). Why wouldn’t you want to receive that as fast as possible?
ngwoo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The world they built for the game is hundreds of terabytes, it’s really the only way to do it without forcing players to preload tiny chunks of the world and restrict their flight to only the ones they’ve downloaded.
bigredcar@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A lot of isps are rolling out gigabit and even faster internet. Finally having a killer app for it will increase demand for it and shame slower isps to upgrade their old coaxial and copper cables with fiber.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
ISPs are unshamable and a flight sim is a niche application.
yamanii@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Who cares about shame when you have no competition? In your dreams.
tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I get Gigabit over coax tho
MSids@lemmy.world 2 months ago
DOCSIS 3.1 is pretty awesome. I heard 4.0 is in testing. Fiber (FttH) is similar to coax in that many subscribers are attached to one head end device. Subscriber throughput is determined by the number of subscribers and the speeds they ordered on the shared resource. Although fiber is leading in total capacity per OLT/PON, it’s not like coax can’t achieve excellence subscriber speeds by just deploying more head end devices with fewer subscribers on each.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 months ago
upload too? cause coax upload sucks ass
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think the thing to note here is that ISPs roll those things out fully aware that hardly anyone who pays for that will actually USE that amount of data. In fact there are some places where regardless of your bandwidth, you have a monthly data allotment. This game represents a shift into super high bandwidth usage for the general non-technical population. If everyone and their mom starts actually using all the bandwidth they pay for, can the ISP deal with that? If you don’t have a monthly data limit, do they start to roll those out to you and your area?
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’ll still cap you at 250Gb a month.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 months ago
idk, I upload almost 1TB per day. never gotten notices or anything. fios.
Damaskox@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I won’t be upgrading my 50mbit download/10mbit upload 😂
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I don’t see why it matters though? You’re not gonna be playing the game on your phone with limited data
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Buddy, today you’re going to learn about data caps.
darreninthenet@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
They still a thing? Not sure they’re that common in the UK at least 🤷🏻♂️
DJDarren@thelemmy.club 2 months ago
I reckon it’s been a good ten years since I had a data cap on my home internet. These days I pay £30 a month for unlimited 900mbps fibre and it’s wonderful.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
this isnt a thing on most countries on earth for “landline” internet
RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Because my ISP charges $50/mo extra for the “privilege” of having unlimited data.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
That’s more than I pay for unlimited gigabit here wtf 😭
Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 2 months ago
My Starlink plan is 50gb per month!
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Are they streaming it to you??
Wait that would actually take FAR LESS DATA
Dhs92@programming.dev 2 months ago
They don’t stream a video feed to you, they stream the terrain to you
radix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’re streaming in the 3d world detail, but the rendering engine is installed locally.
Playing on xCloud will just stream in the visuals that are rendered remotely, so a lot less bandwidth, but then you have the lag, and need a subscription.
Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
What!? Why the games don’t just run locally
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
they’re streaming world data. I shudder to think about the size of the entire dataset.
irotsoma@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So that’s about 15 hours before exceeding your Comcast data cap for the month (1.2TB) assuming you don’t use your internet for anything else that month. Then after that it starts costing you about $16/hr to play in data usage alone. ($10 per 50GB)
smeg@feddit.uk 2 months ago
I keep seeing comcast mentioned, why do you guys across the pond pay for a broadband service with a maximum download amount like it’s a 3G phone?
CEbbinghaus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The next flight aim is gonna lean even heavier into streaming. So not just landscape but also plane models will be streamed. So this is gonna get worse not better
brygphilomena@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What benefit would streaming plane models have?
Landscape and real time weather data makes sense. Things are changing and it doesnt make sense to have high res textures of the entire planet on users PCs. Or are you just meaning on demand download of the skin?
lud@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Well if you are gonna stream something you might as well stream everything if you can. I for one like small install sizes.
brlemworld@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Basically Google Stadia
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 months ago
GeForce now uses 20 gigs/hour at the highest quality, how are they not just sending the entire video to your screen, what more do they need to send??
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
because it takes more data to generate the image than the image itself, especially in dense areas.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 months ago
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.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 months ago
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
exu@feditown.com 2 months ago
Many countries don’t have data caps on broadband.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Just to be clear. Comcast which is a major ISP for the United States has data caps?
I will never understand why the United States insists on living about 30 years behind the rest of the planet.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 months ago
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
yamanii@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I mean, assuming you’re using the maximum recommended bandwidth 100% of the time…? Doesn’t seem very realistic.
Luccus@feddit.org 2 months ago
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.
acchariya@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 months ago
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
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
My ISP will automatically throttle my house if I was slurping up that much bandwidth. It simply isn’t feasible for most people as ISPs usually throttle speeds when they detect sustained high bandwidth activity.
lud@lemm.ee 2 months ago
What ISP? That seems awful.
TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 2 months ago
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.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
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.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 months ago
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.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
Cagi@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
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.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 months ago
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.