Only 50 GB?

[Lowke]

THe predecessor was well over 200gb. Is this REALLY only 50 gb? If so It might we worth buying just for the smaller storage footprint.

[Vault Hunter 101]

Yes its only 50gb, the difference is that you have to constantly download every texture everytime you want to access it rather than keep it on disk

[Eva]

Originally posted by Vault Hunter 101:

Yes its only 50gb, the difference is that you have to constantly download every texture everytime you want to access it rather than keep it on disk

Which is nonsense. They have a built in rolling cache for textures and such that will keep you from needing to download everything over and over and over again. I have tracked my network usage and I am amazed I don't use more network for this game than I do. You do need to turn the cache on. It is under online settings.

[ItaAndy]

Everything is cloude based, hence the reason the game has numerous problems...I love this game, but man, the last few days have been rough.

[testmonkeyuk]

The storage footprint is lower as there's less initial data stored locally as part of the install. What you need is then downloaded on the fly and (if you have the correct settings configured) cached for continued use as and when.

As Eva has said, the overall data streaming isn't really that much compared to FS2020 if you were using photogrammitary and live traffic, weather etc. in that version. There will be additional initial data downloaded for the aircraft you are flying (if not already cached) and some ground tiles / textures during flight that were previously local files but if you were using things like the 3rd party Map Enhancement tool in 2020 or other such add-ons there's probably little difference in the overall streaming load during your flight itself.

The benefit, aside from the smaller storage footprint, is that they should be able to deliver continuous updates for fixes as you download data related to aircraft etc. though whether that'll be the case rather than doing periodic releases remains to be seen.
The downside is that you only need a single packet of data to not get delivered and all of a sudden you could find yourself with an aircraft or game that isn't functioning properly.

The frustration for most people, which I agree with, is that they seem to have taken it one step too far. Being able to download new versions of files on the fly as available should theoretically be great but downloading things like language and avatar data constantly seems overkill.

At some point there is supposed to be the option to be able to not only have data cached but also choose to download a lot of the same data that FS2020 would have stored locally if desired and then it'll be down to individuals to choose exactly how much storage space they want to dedicate to the sim. I'm guessing the impact of doing so will be having to accept updates on launch for any files you've got installed locally that have newer versions - something people used to complain about in 2020

[Twelvefield]

Until the other day, I had both sims on my hard drive. However, frequent visits to naked Laotian Pinochle gambling websites have clogged my drive, so FS2020 had to go. That was huge.