Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 wasn’t prepared for takeoff

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was released on PC and Xbox yesterday but early players have struggled to load or even finish installing the game. Users have reported a range of issues — including post-installation loads stalling before completion, long login queues, and the game itself crashing — with the $70 flying sim currently tagged as “Overwhelmingly Negative” in customer reviews on Steam.

Some players are seeing their downloads freeze at 97 percent, while others were stuck on a login queue page at launch for several hours that says “too many users are trying to connect at the same time.” Microsoft advised players to check the Xbox Support Status page for updates, which doesn’t list any ongoing issues with the game at the time of writing.

“We are aware of user reports of long initial loading times into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024,” Microsoft said via the Flight Simulator support account on X. “With so many users initializing the sim concurrently, we have a large number of server requests. We are working to help resolve the issues as soon as possible.”

For now, Microsoft is advising players to reboot the game if they’re unable to finish loading beyond 90 percent. Some users lucky enough to clear these hurdles and play the game are also experiencing bugs like disappearing cursors and assets not loading correctly — mirroring similar issues that occurred during its predecessor’s launch in 2020.