Microsoft Flight Simulator File Size Revealed For Xbox Series

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a beefy game on PC but it received a recent update that has reduced its file size. Here's how much space it will take on XSX.

[StoneyYoshi]

Thats a decent chunk of storage just to fly around. Im surprised they couldn't compress it down even more compared to the PC version.

[NeoGamer232]

I wish for these types of games that you also had the option to download and run from your console and either select geographic areas you want to download to fly in, and/or just stream the data from the cloud (not stream the sim game as well).

[boing1]

Flight Sim on PC already does that. There is a setting to allow for streaming of high-res data while you're flying. But I think it adds up to the base ~100Gb so I wonder if XSX will have this option too.

[NeoGamer232]

@boring1
Excellent. I hope XB Series does the same thing. I want to play FS on my console, but, at the same time I don't want it eating my NVMe drives.

[Tech5]

Currently
PC - 100 GBs
Xbox - 93 GBs

[execution17]

Big ouch if you have a series s

[DJStotty]

"Big ouch if you have a series s"

Not really, comes in well under Call of Duty cold war at around 143GB

[VariantAEC]

PC owner with the game installed on my SSD. It's the same size sans any additional downloads from the games own in-game store where like via Minecraft you can download additional content for free or for a fee.

With all the latest content the game is pretty chunky over 130GB last I played but it took me way to long to upgrade my internal system storage to ultrafast SSD and Gen-3 NVMe media so I just missed the recent Iceland world update. Eventually after some of my other MS store purchased games are finished redownloading I'll update MSFS again. The way MS store handles apps that fail to start is completely ludicrous BTW it just erases everything including your save data and forces you to start over from scratch. F•••ing MS experts at nothing.
So I will be starting from scratch in FH4 as I just learned. Because I forgot where the save data was stored and I didn't expect that data to be erased when reinstalling the game which another BTW moment was already on my new SSD and recognized by the system it just wouldn't start. So fixing the problem means completely forgetting that it ever existed and starting over!
And people wonder why I loath PC gaming? Just because I swapped out the drive making matters more ridiculous is the game worked fine ON *THE NEW DRIVE* the previous few boots and that was before the 21H1 update. There was another feature update installed to catch up with 21H1 and Forza Horizon 4 stopped working after the previous feature update was installed which unlocked the 21H1 Windows 10 feature update (just to be clear). Either way all my games were working fine from my new drives and then they decided to not work for no reason.

[DaveZero]

That's not a bad size at all for the lovely looking game that it looks to be.

You have far less convincing games with a file size like that.

It's more than just flying around though, it's a real simulation and will be as close as to life like as you can get in terms of piloting planes and destinations to visit. It also has the whole world crammed into the file from the way it sounded that is to scale.

[StoneyYoshi]

I know how the game plays and I agree, I have it on PC. But the Look of the game doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the file size. With the file size only dropping 7Gb from its PC counterpart shows that the haven't really utilized the compression capabilities of the XSX|S.

[Jericho1337]

Well it’s available to pre load now so should be ready in time for launch 😂

[Azraeia]

damn you still on dial up bro?

[Jericho1337]

https://images.app.goo.gl/h...

[DJStotty]

wait you can pre load flight sim?

"Where's that goddamn controller" (fumbling frantically around)

[roadkillers]

Just let me stream this!

It is frustrating to constantly have to uninstall the MasterChief collection and Warzone to play smaller games. Just allow us to stream like the Xcloud... damn. At least I can keep my non-gamepass games installed.

[NeoGamer232]

Yes, this is a huge problem this generation. install a big AAA game and BAM, 1/5 of your NVMe drive is gone. Cannot wait til the price of these drives comes down and the size increases a lot. I am a game surfer and not having enough drive space really makes game surfing a pain.

I don't even want to talk about the PTSD I am getting from my once a week reassessment, uninstalling, and installing to try and predict what games I will want to play next week. Lucky I have 1 Gigabit Internet. Otherwise I'd probably take my new consoles and do some anger management with my sledgehammer.

I have the 1 TB expansion on my XSXes. Still I can typically only have 60-140 games installed. (I know lame first world problem), But I have over 2,500 games owned digitally so installing less then 10% of them is annoying. It is even worse on PS. I am still waiting for the ability to add NVMe drives. Has that feature been added yet?

[InUrFoxHole]

No. Not yet, unless I missed an update.

[DaveZero]

I use a 1TB for my series S and it still does me and have lots of games on it, one of them is over a 100gb in which is Conan exiles.

I don't know why people try to turn this into an arguement because really all the consoles of this new gen could of done with bigger hard drives internally.

[NeoGamer232]

@DaveZero
I said this is a generational problem. It is not just XB or PS. It is both. On my XBO I was able to keep a satisfactory amount of games on the console and available. As more and more games require the fast NVMe drive and become larger and larger this is becoming more and more of an issue. AAA games with a full campaign, and full multiplayer will have minimum installs around 100-150 Gb. Add a full multiplayer and these games will top 200-250 Gb by the end of the generation.

I see it as natural growth, but the NVMe drive sizes are disproportionate to the game sizes as compared to this last generation. The problem is that last gen I could install all my games on whatever drive I could find and run them from that drive directly. Now we taking a step backwards where many games have to be on these NVMe drives to work. Kind of defeats the purpose of the fast load times if you have to spend 5-10 minutes moving games around to have them run fast. LOL.

[DJStotty]

You not got an external?

Just transfer games to the external until you want to play them, takes 5 minutes.

[XxINFERNUSxX]

https://www.youtube.com/wat... Running on a 6900XT 4K ultra over 100FPS only drops when you get close to cities. There will be significant cuts in most areas to get it to run at 30fps on consoles. 60fps I don't know what can they do to reach that.

[Father__Merrin]

It's running at 48 to 30 28 37 tjats not smooth gameplay

[NeoGamer232]

If 30 fps is not smooth enough then you couldn't have started gaming until this past generation. It is dumb to say 30 fps is not smooth enough because almost AAA open world games are 30 fps.

The Last of Us on PS3 won pretty much universal GOTY often falling below 27 fps on on the PS3. you can't say that is lousy gameplay or else they should rescind TLOU GOTY awards.

[ProjectVulcan]

When I watched the Series X direct feed I was considerably less impressed than seeing the PC version initially and then playing it first hand on PC. It's clearly cut back quite a bit to run on Series X but the experience is still preserved that's the main thing.

[VariantAEC]

Update the underlying codebase.
People get chastised for saying this was poorly coded, but I'm going to say it is poorly coded.
Ground traffic is completely stupid and turning all forms of ground traffic off brings my FPS up to a stable 20 (because MS store games are s••• and don't play nice with whisper mode) at 1080p. Of course the framerate can actually be higher if the game worked properly. I get 60FPS only at the initial content management screen. I have to disable Nvidia's "Whisper Mode" to get anything over 20 in demanding scenes on my laptop. Mind you I can run this game maxed out without any AI traffic (though I can leave animal AI turned on) on my GTX 1070 (8GB) coupled with an i7 7700 HQ at 30 FPS.

Graphics aren't Microsoft Flight Simulators problem those are decidedly last gen in implementation. Dev mode also makes it abundantly clear that draw distance is very limited for any special craft that might breech the atmosphere. No space craft in this game ever well unless the underlying renderer allows for more of the planet to be drawn in at once. So yeah I paid $90 for this and while it's obviously way better than tje simulations I've been playing on my Phone it's still last gen in nature and it shows from the way clouds are rendered to material lighting overall the game looks very good when using Bing maps data enhanced by BlackShark AI even so it doesn't hold up that well under close scrutiny even from a distance. It's still nice to grief other players by trying to follow them in close formation in the Cessna CJ4 Citation jet.

Oh yeah they can see me! I've not tried wrecking into strangers or AI planes though. Not convinced that's a thing. The worst I've done is overshoot a runway into trees causing a wreck. I've overshot a runaway on a dirt strip that put me on a street apparently you can't wreck with ground vehicles (they drive through the plane no consequence). The other problem I had was getting stuck with ground crews not coming with the pushback when I decided to try to take off realistically. This resulted in me nosing into the side of the airport.
Yes, because the game works properly.

"I requested a pushback five times already!"
[Hours later]
"F••• it."
[Crashes into airport from parking only after completing the flight check and calling repeatedly for a pushback]
Great sim!
I started from Laguardia Airport which is pretty built up and ground crews are enabled at their lowest settings.

[Zerobalance]

I'm stoked for this game. Download it already. All I gotta do is learn how to fly. Gonna crash a lot. Park my Snowspinner & hop into plane. Here we go.

[Father__Merrin]

93gb not too bad

[Deathdeliverer]

That’s big as hell but what I wonder a couple things.
1) what edition are we getting for gamepass? Is the 93 GB The basic version?
2) Is the plan to charge us for the deluxe edition and all the optional add on packs or will this be a definitive edition type of deal?

[DJStotty]

gamepass only gets vanilla editions, extra's will be DLC.

So gamepass will be basic version, and then if you like, you can buy/download the fully rendered airports/extra planes.

[DOMination-]

I think I saw during the conference that the first expansion coming at the end of the year will be free though

[Deathdeliverer]

Yes! I am hype about ANYTHING Top Gun with my 80s ass so that put a big smile on my face. I need Apple Music on the Xbox store so I can play “Highway to the danger zone” and “take my breath away” for the flight home and the sun is starting to set and I’m sad because I just lost my buddy Goose…..

[DivineHand125]

These file sizes will eventually be the norm this gen and if you're into next gen gaming, do not buy the Xbox series S. At $300 with less than 400 GB of storage space, you will get to a point where you will need to buy an expansion card which is about $110 for 500 GB and $220 for the 1 TB card. It makes more sense to either buy a ps5 or get a series X where both consoles have not only more space but more power.

[Locutus_of_borg]

I’d agree with your statement if the memory card was only compatible with the series s , even the bigger storage options on the other consoles isn’t that great , better, but not great , I’ve bought the seagate expansion for my series s , but will use it on my series x when I eventually find one , so I don’t consider it a bad buy and it hadn’t added to my series s price as I would of gotten one anyway to use on the x

[DJStotty]

Or just buy a 5tb external drive for around £90....

PS5 has 667.2GB
Xbox Series X has 802GB

So none of the consoles have nothing to shout about when it comes to storage.

[DJStotty]

Need to proof read my comments lol, i meant

"so none of the consoles have anything to shout about"

[BrainSyphoned]

The sort of relaxed, every now and then type of game that will never leave your system. Might as well reserve the data now so you get used to it.

[dreamed]

30 fps...man I've become a total frames per second elitist...

[dreamed]

Will I be able to use a controller?...that could be awkward? Doesn't this game require a whole keyboard and flight sticks?

[DJStotty]

No, controller setup will be like many of the other sims, radial quick actions etc, keyboard and mouse will be supported if that is the way you want to go, along with flight stick support.

Just been announced :-

https://www.windowscentral....

"Microsoft confirms the standard Xbox controller, or a mouse and keyboard, will work with Microsoft Flight Simulator at launch. The title also plans to support select third-party accessories, including the Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas One, Thrustmaster T.Flight Rudder, and HORI HOTAS Flight Stick for Xbox One."

[Orchard]

Smaller than I expected for flight sim, but it’ll still stream data on top of that too I guess.

[Richhard1]

30fps. Oh god, this is terrible news.