‘We’re really sorry’: Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 head acknowledges launch login issues

Microsoft has acknowledged the problems players have been having launching Flight Simulator 2024.

The latest edition in the company’s flight sim series was released on Tuesday and many players (including VGC) have been unable to get past an inital queue screen.

Those who have made it past the queue have been reporting lengthy loading times that freeze at 97%, and those who mananged to get past that have been reporting missing aircraft from their library.

Now, in a ‘Launch Day Update’ video, Microsoft Flight Sim head Jorg Neumann and Asobo Studio CEO Sebastian Wloch have apologised to players and explained the situation.

“While it’s a great launch day, we know a lot of people are frustrated,” Neumann said. “We’re really sorry, we want to apologise. This video, we made it because we’re always here, we want to be as transparent and as honest as possible. So we have some problems today, the team is on it, and we will keep going.”

Explaining the issue in greater detail, Wloch said the problem stemmed from a server cache that’s struggling to keep up with demand.

“At the very beginning, when players start, they’re basically asking a server for some data and that server is going to catch it in a database,” he explained.

“It’s a very big database, and there is a cache, and that cache is currently getting saturated. It’s a cache that’s been thoroughly tested during the whole tech alpha, we’ve done load tests simulating 200,000 users, and tonight it’s just completely overwhelmed.

“We’ve tried to restart the services, we’ve taken measures to throttle the number of people who can come in at the same time. It worked pretty well, so we increased the queue size, the speed by 5X, and it worked well for maybe half an hour and then all of a sudden the cache collapsed again.

“So we’re restarting, we’re trying to investigate, doing our best, and going as fast as we can to make sure everybody can go in.”

A new update on the official Microsoft Flight Simulator site claims the problem has been addressed and that players should be able to start gaining access to the game.

“We have solved the issues and are now bringing players in at a steady pace,” it says. “We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.”