loki

Definitely follow the Steam guide for moving the installation folder. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4BD4-4528-6B2E-8327

The Steam Edition is basically FSX Gold repackaged for sale on Steam along with a few bug fixes, and most FSX add-ons are compatible with the Steam Edition.

There isn't any limit on the number of activations either, though one may need to call Microsoft if it thinks you've changed too much hardware or moved to a new computer.

It's not even about adding servers in the traditional sense these days. Microsoft has their own Azure CDN (content delivery network) with multiple data centres across North America and around the world. The choice is up to them how well they take advantage of that, or not, and increasing capacity for a few days shouldn't be hard, or very costly to do. And MSFS users in Europe and North America, or even the west and east coasts, shouldn't be hitting the same servers when downloading the update (I doubt they are). https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/cdn/ https://azure.status.microsoft/en-CA/status

We can now get some more ideas of what will be in the new sim via the MSFS 2020 development updates. Look for "Planned MSFS 2024" in the bug and wish lists below. Still not much detail, but might be a good place to watch for more details. A couple of things I didn't see mentioned in the original announcement: Shared Cockpit / Multiplayer Aircraft-Specific Control Profiles Access to Flight Planner Without Leaving Flight https://www.flightsimulator.com/feedback-snapshot/

For anyone still getting stuck with the update, try the steps MS/Asobo has shared below. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/update-resolution-of-sim-update-13-download-installation-issues/610903

See the release notes. There are a couple new options available to manage it. https://www.flightsimulator.com/release-notes-sim-update-13-1-34-16-0-available-now/

It was part of Sim Update 10 (SU10) and available for all MSFS2020 users. You will need to update the sim which will get you up to SU13. There are a few YouTube videos out that walk through how to enable and set it up.

Update: Never mind, the update is hung up on decompressing one of the patches again.

The sim needs to decompress and install the patches after they are downloaded. For some reason, with this update on my machine, it gets hung up on the decompressing stage. Not sure what it's doing as it doesn't appear to be doing anything in when looking at the Task manager. Previous updates have downloaded and installed with no trouble, similar to Nels and others' experiences. Pausing the download and restarting the sim seems to have fixed it, but it hasn't finished yet. Sometimes it's better to wait until the day after the update is released, or let it run overnight while you sleep too. And just to be clear on the internet connection, it isn't just the speed of your personal internet connection that matters. There are plenty of other places along the way that can affect your download too.

Any time you're writing files to a drive, an SSD will be faster. The more data, the bigger the difference. Having said that, the bigger issue people run into here is likely to do with their connection to the MS content servers, the servers themselves (ie. what bandwidth limits does MS have in place, among other things) and/or how the sim processes those updates on the local machine.

Asobo have been building in multiple screen support so you can setup three monitors MSFS2020.

To add a little more context, Sim Update 13 was just released. The release notes can be read below. https://www.flightsimulator.com/release-notes-sim-update-13-1-34-16-0-available-now/

If you have FSX SP2 or Acceleration installed you don't need the 4GB patch as the largeaddressaware flag is already set.

It isn't a Windows problem, but a limitation from the hardware of the time. The limit comes from 32 bit CPUs which had a limit of the amount of addresses (2^32 = 4GB) available to access every location in the virtual address space (this includes RAM, the page file and hardware like the GPU). In the 32 bit Windows days Microsoft split the address space between the operating system (including drivers) and running applications for desktop systems (32 bit servers were a bit different), so each half got 2GB to run in. One could use the old /3GB switch to change the balance if you knew what you were doing, but the default ensured the OS and (most) applications both had enough space to run. If the application filled up its address space and hit the limit (nothing to do with Windows not keeping up), you got the OOM errors we run into, though the OS and other applications would be fine as they have their own address spaces. With the jump to 64 bit systems, the virtual address limit was significantly increased, so there was no need to limit the OS or applications the same way. However, 32 bit applications still couldn't access anything more than the 4GB, so are still capped. If the application was well written, a flag could be set so it can access 4GB rather the old 2GB of address space. As much fun as it is to bash Microsoft, they do have some smart people working on the core of Windows who know what they're doing.

Did you install the FSX SP1 and SP2 patches? Being that it's a 32 bit application, it can only use a max of 4GB of virtual address space. Are there any add-ons installed? One cause of out of memory errors is a corrupted or buggy add-on. PMDG has a good guide to FSX and out of memory errors, linked below, that may be useful. https://support.precisionmanuals.com/kb/a108/vas-management-stopping-out-of-memory-oom-errors.aspx

You are right that intellectual property laws haven't entirely caught up, however, one doesn't need to actively protect copyrights (trademarks, I believe, do need more active protection). In most, if not all Western countries, you get the copyright the minute you create something, and keep it until either the time period runs out (which is far too long these days thanks to Disney and other large corporations), or you sign the rights over to someone else. There is no requirement to actively police it, and just because you stop selling it doesn't mean it's now open for others to use. Microsoft and Nintendo have the resources to go after people, whereas few individuals or small companies do, but this doesn't change the validity of the copyright. It's unfair to expect an individual developer or small team to devote the, often significant, resources to continually police download sites, and could even bankrupt them. Abandonware is still technically covered by copyright, and the sites distributing it largely get away with it either by being in a different country, or they are banking on no one coming after them. One way of addressing this would be cutting back the length of time copyrights apply to software so they fall into the public domain much sooner. These days in many countries it's life of the creator plus 50 years, or more. Given how fast technology and computing changes, these time frames are far, far too long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_lengths

It can be run in an offline mode after being setup to do so. However, you would be restricted to the base scenery, or anything you have cached, and loose access to the online streamed scenery.

I would still put that down as a connection quality issue more than speed specifically. If your connection dropped to less than half the max speed, there is likely something else going, such as the router getting hung up for some reason. The recommended bandwidth speed is 20 Mbps, with 50 Mbps being the ideal. Another factor is how many other people in the house are using the internet at the same time. The more computers and other devices using bandwidth, the faster the connection you will need.

I suspect quality of the Starlink connection was the issue rather than speed. My connection was only 50 Mbps when I first got the sim, and never had trouble with it.

That was a choice by Asobo and had little to do with being ported to the Xbox console. They could have mapped things the same way, but a different development team made some different choices (for better or worse). A better way to look at MSFS2020 is that it is a new and different sim, rather than a direct continuation of the previous entries in the series. Much more like moving from FSX to X-Plane rather than FS2004 to FSX. They have been adding in better support for multiple monitors.

It is a shame, and highlights one of the big questions with applications like the MSFS series. At what point do you drop backwards compatibility to move forward? FSX basically hit the wall with increasing the level of detail available in the sim combined with the underlying hardware platforms. Something had to change eventually to bring the sims to modern hardware, alongside allowing for the increased functionality (like an improved flight model) and graphics many like.

I'm not sure it's waning at all, however, much of the online traffic for MSFS2020 isn't happening here, unfortunately. There are the official MS/Asobo forums, as well as a number of social media based communities, such as on Reddit. On the other hand, there is still plenty of interest in the older sims too.

The tech world does move fast. Keep asking questions, and someone here will be happy to help.

You're concerns are definitely not unfounded. Companies can amass a surprising amount of data about a person. If anyone wants to get an idea of what Microsoft has been tracking in relation to your Microsoft/Xbox account, go to the link below. https://account.microsoft.com/privacy