Flight Simulator 2020 Is So Big That It Won't Even Fit on ten double-layer DVDs
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schmidtbag
Came here for this. If you're going to use optical media in this day and age, might as well use BluRay. Though, I do think the idea of a flash drive would make more sense. That way you might actually be able to read the game data directly from it, without being a major bottelneck.
That's rather ignorant. Your lifestyle isn't everyone else's. I myself could download this in a reasonable amount of time and haven't bought anything with optical media in years, but that doesn't mean everyone can.
Isn't BluRay the only way to get reasonably good quality for movies [legally]? Most streaming services have very lossy compression and I'm not aware of anywhere that allows you to download high-quality movies or TV shows. I welcome being proven wrong here - I'm genuinely curious what we're going to do if BluRay ceases to exist for such things.
Since when are you an authority over other people's hobbies or how they spend their money? Also, if you fly professionally, what's the point of running a simulator (assuming you're not a fighter jet pilot)?
Venix
+1 @schmidtbag i was going to make the same points but you beat me to it !
Kaarme
You overestimate flash drive speeds. Besides, they would need to use a really cheap, and thus slow, drive to not make it matter much in the whole product price. People wouldn't like it if the physical retail game was, for example, 30 dollars more expensive because of the media (and it would be still much slower than a SATA SSD).
Edit: Though perhaps for some parts of the game the speed would be enough if it was a high quality flash drive. But since it wouldn't be high quality, I doubt it.
SamuelL421
I highly approve of the physical / boxed edition. It would add $20-30 to the cost, though I feel a flash drive may more more sense than optical at this point. I would certainly pay extra for a nostalgic big-box edition of most games if they included a well made / complete manual. I still have some early 90's sims with their several hundred page text book manuals.
SamuelL421
I'm in favor of the flash drive option, though I definitely think it should be installation media only. I agree that you would not get good read performance out of flash that cheap, even if it was running over a USB 3.1/3.2 interface.
Truder
Not everyone has access to fast internet... A lot of people still rely on ADSL which at best is 24mbps
Personally, I wish PC games were released on optical media still (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray), allows to have physical backup and something tangible to own.
schmidtbag
Do I? The game is most certainly programmed to handle the bottlenecks of your run-of-the-mill mechanical HDDs if they're actually packaging it on DVDs. There are USB 3.x flash drives with read speeds that exceed 100MB/s. This is faster than most mechanical HDDs, plus there's the benefit of the minuscule seek times. The reason this game is so big is because it has assets for literally the entire planet (and if they have textures in multiple resolutions, that would add up fast). Even the highest flying plane can only see a relatively small percentage of the surface of the planet, so realistically, you're barely loading any data at all. I wouldn't be surprised if even a budget USB 3.0 drive could keep up (though, getting the game started would probably be a bit of a wait).
On a USB 2.0 drive, yeah, that's probably too slow.
As for the cost of the media, what difference does it make? If you would rather not have a physical copy, you don't have to get one. If you were to install the game on a SSD, you're still spending about $30 (frankly, probably more) of your own storage space. So if you were to play the game over USB (assuming the drive is fast enough) then you're not really at a loss.
Mineria
A write protected flash drive would be a smart move for physical distribution of the installation files, like some companies already do with drivers and software.
geogan
Sure. For quality purposes they decided to store all textures as 24bit .BMP...
jbscotchman
That is a very valid and genuine concern. Everything has become digital now days, there is no sense of ownership when it comes to music, movies, games, money, etc. A cyber war would literally break the world right now.
HeavyHemi
I'm pretty sure that the storage medium is irrelevant to game performance. Data will not be streaming from either a memory stick or optical media DURING game play.
geogan
It would probably be next to impossible to mass produce flash drives with the size of this game already written to them - would take them ages to write them all. Big difference between flash drives containing a few megabytes of drivers...
FookDat
Many games are over 85 GB, Battlefield V says 86+GB to download.
geogan
Its the reason why me and an awful lot of AV home cinema enthusiasts still buy movies on Bluray / 4K UltraHD disc.
When the companies decide to delete movies off streaming services any time they feel like... EVEN movies you have bought on the streaming service (read small print) it makes much more sense to have a physical disc that nobody can take away... or no pandemic can cut your bitrates for... or other disaster can remove completely.
CalculuS
"Please insert floppy disk number 64678."
geogan
And its even worse than that - there are regular updates and patches for Battlefield and Starwars Battlefront II which are ALSO another 50GB at least each every time!
TLD LARS
Well Call of Duty Warzone is already up there, with 20Gb updates dropping a couple of times a year.
I use a blue ray burner for long time backup sometimes, the disks are still cheaper then flash drives or SD cards.
0blivious
I am reminded of the early 90s. 14 floppy disks for an installation. 13 disks, and 45 minutes later...
Data error reading drive A:\
Abort, Retry, Fail? __
EspHack
it seems there's a tech gap even within the tech sector...
I don't even use usb drives anymore, 2x2 wifi ac can do almost 80MB/s, file transfers have never been easier, we are about to get the whole globe covered in 1gbps thanks to starlink and whoever else decides to compete, and yet we have some big ass company shipping half a game on some disc just to ask the user to download the rest anyway, and the "next gen" console stuff is also packing discs that will probably get as much use as firewire on pcs
how do you even get a disc reader on a computer modern enough to run that game if you supposedly have no connection available? I've been to pretty remote areas and still wondered whats the point of getting a big game shipped in physical media if that would take weeks anyway, just like downloading 100gb over a 1mbps connection
the only justification i can imagine is data capped users having to pay x10 the price to the ISP rather than a shipping company, which is a whole nother level of idiosincrasy
TLD LARS
Starlink is not going to be 1gbps anytime soon.
My wireless internet record is 120mbps and i have 200 meters to the mast, there is no way a satellite 500km away is going to beat that, even if the signal goes directly up and down again at best case scenario.
The International space station apparently got upgraded to 600mbps, but the ping can be up to half a second, it makes no sense that a private person can buy a starlink uplink and get better internet then a dedicated link between earth and ISS.
