Microsoft fixed several 'Flight Simulator' installation issues

While Microsoft’s launch of Flight Simulator 2020 has largely been a success (apart from the odd monolith), lots of folks have found that the massive 150GB app can get stuck during installation. To that end, Microsoft has released a patch designed to fix multiple installation issues, along with some minor stability and other issues.

There’s a laundry list of installation problems addressed, according to the patch notes:

• The install process will no longer be blocked after a partial decompression of a package.

• The install process will no longer be blocked when a local user account includes non-ASCII characters.

• The install process will no longer be blocked after a failed connection to servers.

• The install process will no longer display an empty onboarding screen under certain conditions.

• The title will download a critical missing/deleted package to access the main menu even if the save data preference is set to offline (when an internet connection is available).

In addition, the game will no longer automatically download packages deleted by the content manager or get stuck in an infinite loading state when offline. Microsoft also patched several performance issues and updated the currency display in the marketplace.

Judging by Microsoft’s forums, a significant number of users have encountered one or more of the above problems. Our own Engadget editor Richard Lawler was blocked on installation when a data pack got corrupt, and Engadget Japan’s Ittousai was stymied by the non-ASCII character issue.

The problems can be particularly frustrating given the enormous size of the download and the space it can take up on your hard drive. If your installation has failed, developer Asobo Studio recommends that you uninstall any instances of the game in order to re-install it cleanly. You can find complete instructions for that in the patch notes.