Flight Simulator 2024 servers buckle at launch as the masses try to login

Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator entry is touting a huge amount of upgrades under its hood, simulating the entire earth to a much higher degree than ever before. The game launched just a few hours ago, but it is already having some issues letting players experience that "full digital twin."

Players logging into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 right at launch fell into a loading screen that took almost an hour of waiting before being able to go into the game. Those were the lucky ones, though, as many were simply stuck in the loading screen with the message "Loading Language" or "Activating Packages." Two staff members of Neowin have been going through the same issue since launch, both via the Microsoft Store and Steam.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator support social media page acknowledged the login issues and asked players to reboot if the loading screen seems stuck:

We are aware of user reports of long initial loading times into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. 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 users whose initial load is past 90% and no longer progressing, we recommend a reboot. Otherwise we advise waiting to allow the loading to proceed as normal.

A later message also acknowledged a bug with missing aircraft in the selection screen, with the support team adding that "this issue is related to the server issues we are currently working to resolve."

Following the massive server issues, launching the simulator currently puts players into a login queue, as seen above. It's unclear how long this queue is, with presumably millions of players from Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Game Pass attempting to log in at the same time.