Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2024 launch day users seeing long loading times

If you tried to get some flight time in Flight Simulator 2024 today only to find yourself staring at a loading screen, you’re not alone. The official X page for Microsoft’s flight sim posted an update that several users are reporting “long initial loading times.” Not exactly the debut anyone was hoping for.

The post blames the game’s slowdown on the large number of server requests trying to log into the game at once — maybe something Microsoft should have expected. The post also recommends rebooting your computer or console if the initial load makes it past 90 percent mark and then stalls out. If it’s under 90 percent and still loading, Microsoft advises “waiting to allow the loading to proceed as normal.” Our own has been stuck looking at the very same loading screen for around 45 minutes.

Xbox launched Flight Simulator 2024 and added it to its catalog for PC, Xbox Series X/S and the cloud today following a in October for the PC version. Microsoft recommends running the game on PCs with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, a Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU, 8 GB of VRAM, 32 GB of RAM and 50 GB of storage space.