If you’re an avid player of Microsoft Flight Simulator, you may have experienced frustratingly slow download speeds despite having a high-speed internet connection. While many users have suggested various fixes, the real issue lies in the throttling of Microsoft Servers hosted in Azure.
According to users on the Flight Simulator forum thread, the slow download speeds have been a major concern for a while now. Despite having a 1 Gbps internet connection, some users have reported download speeds as low as 3 Mbps when downloading the game. This clearly indicates that the issue is not related to the user’s internet connection, but to the servers hosted in Azure.
The Slow Download Speed Megathread is awash with people suggesting VPN’s, DNS changes, and IPV6 disabling, which anyone with any knowledge will understand is not the core issue. I posted on the thread myself, with some pretty advanced tools to show them that they are routing all the traffic via a CDN network, but the reality is that its all coming from the one place:
Despite numerous complaints, Microsoft has not officially acknowledged the issue. This has understandably caused frustration among users, who feel like their concerns have been ignored. Even contacting Microsoft Support has not resulted in satisfactory solutions for users. Worse yet, ASOBO and Microsoft support have actually posted an article on the Zendesk pushing people to VPN / DNS fixes, its quite unbelievable.
In conclusion, the slow download speeds in Microsoft Flight Simulator are really damaging what should be a great experience. Especially, it seems to European users. I hope Asobo and Microsoft sort this out soon.
I have tried all the “fixes” and my download speed never goes higher than 8mbs. I am sure Microsoft is throttling the download. It’s going to take something like 50 hours to install the game. I should have gone with X-Plane.
One day I hope they fix it. New version around the corner, and it needs a better managed azure delivery.